the good old days: free textbooks from publishers

[lightning]

I woke up this morning and had the weirdest random realization. It used to be that publishers would send me free textbooks (without me asking). I have not had a free textbook sent to me in more than a decade, and even then, the "gifts" came in as a trickle.

OTOH, in the early part of the 21st century, the mail people would hand-deliver the unsolicited books directly to my office, during my posted office hours, because there were too many to fit in my mailbox. Book re-sellers would routinely come by my office and offer untraceable cash for any unwanted textbooks. I have not heard from a book re-seller in probably 5–10 years.

We used to talk about this in the old CHE fora. It's one of the things we don't talk about anymore, in the new fora, because times have changed.

When was the last time anyone got a free textbook from a publisher, without asking for it?

[mamselle]

Publishers' margins are so slim, it's not surprising the adopt-a-book programs went the way of the troglodytes....

I did get free French books from the rep when I was hired at the very last minute for French I two years running, but they came three weeks into the term because I'd only been hired (the first time) a week before and (the second time) the night before....

The first time, the bookstore hadn't even gotten an order from them (the person who was supposed to teach the course had told them in the beginning of the summer she wasn't returning, and wouldn't be ordering a book since she wanted to leave that for the new person....but no-one read the email...)

The second time, knowing the issues, I made sure the books were ordered--they were, but they hadn't arrived yet, and it was a different series than the one I'd taught from previously because the 'stable' French II-III-IV adjunct (translate: tenured, more or less, she'd been there 8 years by then, just didn't deign to teach intro courses...) had decided to change up the publisher, but hadn't put the order for the series I books in as requested...until the week before.

It was especially ironic the first time, because the (new) department chair also informed me, since I hadn't taught for them before, she needed to do an observation of a class within the first two weeks.

I'd been giving assignments of my own because none of us had any books to work from; I'd been making up exercises (mostly from my own saved texts and the music/dance assignments I always gave) and doing the usual drills, etc., which no-one seemed to mind.

So I figured I was doing very well for almost no lead-time and looked forward to reading my evaluation.

She dinged me for not making better use of the textbook.

M.

* (As one should always do in such cases, I refused to sign off on the eval as it stood and wrote an explanatory rebuttal, which I signed and attached to the eval with a note where the signature should have been, saying it would be incomplete without my attached addendum.  She apologized.)

[Aster]

It's a bit different in the covid pandemic, with everything all ahoo, but just prior to the pandemic shutting everything down, I was getting unsolicited textbooks regularly shipped to me.

Book buyers would be stopping by my office pretty often also.

[Ruralguy]

Didn't even get book buyers that much any longer within a couple of years prior to COVID, and now, nothing.

None of my books' publishers send demo copies. They do however provide links to online books.

I am now trying to switch to open source books anyway.

[jerseyjay]

Until maybe a decade ago, I regularly got samples of history textbooks mailed to me, unsolicited. Since I taught US, World, and European history, this was quite a collection. And it was common for somebody to stop by my office during office hours and try to buy them off me. Since I hadn't asked for the books, and I was living on an adjunct's salary, and because my office was cramped, I often sold them, which could sometimes bring in up to a couple of hundred dollars at a time. Some of these resellers seemed like characters from a bad noir movie, including one guy who used to show up wearing all leather (shoes, pants, jacket, hat), another with interesting piercings, etc.

About a decade ago I temporarily stopped teaching. When I returned about five years ago, there were no more free samples. I would sometimes get flyers about new books with a postcard to request a free copy. I still have some resellers come by, although at a much less frequent pace. They also seem much more selective. I guess I could order a bunch of books just to sell them, but it seems unseemly, and too much work (and probably illegal) to ask for free copies of books with no interest in using them except to resell them.  (I have heard stories of people who do just that, though.)

On the other hand, I have found it much harder to actually get copies of books that I am interested in using, or even using. It usually requires signing up for an online account, giving a bunch of information about the course, and promising under threat of death that I am not lying. One major publisher only wants to send me PDFs of a book. One only wanted to send me an electronic version even after I assigned it to 30 students.  (I do get that Covid made it harder to send stuff, but this was before Covid.)

I wouldn't actually care about these cost-cutting moves, if they resulted in less expensive books for my students, but textbook prices do not seem to have fallen.

[Parasaurolophus]

I got something five or so years ago, if memory serves.

I inherited a lot of those free textbooks from profs and previous office-dwellers. A few are good, and worth keeping, but most of them just got swept up whenever the independent textbook seller came by to buy books.

[mleok]

Publishers' margins are so slim, it's not surprising the adopt-a-book programs went the way of the troglodytes....

I don't understand why you think their margins are slim, at least for the ones that publish textbooks for large required classes, like calculus.

[mamselle]

They don't actually make all that much per book, once the revisions, printing costs, permissions, development and layout costs, etc. are all figured in.

The urban myth that they're soaking students is not really founded in fact.

Books cost a lot, I agree, but that's because they cost a lot to make.

The whole system is indurated, which is why online materials will eventually be the only sustainable means of publication.

M.

[mleok]

They don't actually make all that much per book, once the revisions, printing costs, permissions, development and layout costs, etc. are all figured in.

The urban myth that they're soaking students is not really founded in fact.

Books cost a lot, I agree, but that's because they cost a lot to make.

The whole system is indurated, which is why online materials will eventually be the only sustainable means of publication.

M.

Yeah, I don't buy it. A calculus text costs $240 to purchase, and I don't know what kind of permissions are necessary for such a text. Maybe printing in full color is expensive, but they could have used a cheaper greyscale process and reduced the cost of the textbook accordingly.

Springer charges just $25 for a print on demand copy of my $110 600 page research monograph, and the print quality is truly no worse than the regular edition of the book. So, I'm still struggling to see what goes into the $240 per calculus text which is sold in ridiculously high volumes.

I can perhaps understand small university presses specializing in low volume research monographs struggling, but I have absolutely no sympathy for the large commerical publishers.

[dismalist]

Here's Courant's textbook on calculus, both volumes in pdf:

Vol I, https://www.ime.usp.br/~gorodski/ps/Courant-DifferentialIntegralCalculusVolI.pdf

Vol II, https://www.ime.usp.br/~gorodski/ps/Courant-DifferentialIntegralCalculusVolIi.pdf

Texts get expensive as the strategy of creating new editions, of little extra value, get put on reading lists to make the instructor's life easier and kill the used book market. And the kids have the money to buy this garbage! There was a time when I taught a certain course from a certain textbook. Revisions turned out to be in large measure renumbering of problem sets! I wrote up the problem sets I wanted and handed them out, so that there would be no confusion. Told the kids to buy earlier editions of the textbook, used. As for substance, not too hard to know or find journal articles containing the stuff one needs.

Ages ago I got through college on used books.

[mleok]

Here's Courant's textbook on calculus, both volumes in pdf:

Vol I, https://www.ime.usp.br/~gorodski/ps/Courant-DifferentialIntegralCalculusVolI.pdf

Vol II, https://www.ime.usp.br/~gorodski/ps/Courant-DifferentialIntegralCalculusVolIi.pdf

Texts get expensive as the strategy of creating new editions, of little extra value, get put on reading lists to make the instructor's life easier and kill the used book market. And the kids have the money to buy this garbage! There was a time when I taught a certain course from a certain textbook. Revisions turned out to be in large measure renumbering of problem sets! I wrote up the problem sets I wanted and handed them out, so that there would be no confusion. Told the kids to buy earlier editions of the textbook, used. As for substance, not too hard to know or find journal articles containing the stuff one needs.

Ages ago I got through college on used books.

Yes, indeed, often the only sense in which calculus texts get updated are that the problems are renumbered. Like you, I type out the question in its entirety on the problem set, so that students can use a previous edition. These days, the publishers of calculus texts make most of their money from the automated homework system which requires a subscription for each student, even if they use a preowned copy of the book.

[marshwiggle]

They don't actually make all that much per book, once the revisions, printing costs, permissions, development and layout costs, etc. are all figured in.

The urban myth that they're soaking students is not really founded in fact.

Books cost a lot, I agree, but that's because they cost a lot to make.

The whole system is indurated, which is why online materials will eventually be the only sustainable means of publication.

M.

Yeah, I don't buy it. A calculus text costs $240 to purchase, and I don't know what kind of permissions are necessary for such a text. Maybe printing in full color is expensive, but they could have used a cheaper greyscale process and reduced the cost of the textbook accordingly.

Definitely. Look online for the "international versions" of textbooks. They're way lower priced, usually paperback instead of hardcover but otherwise identical. If publishers were losing money on them, they wouldn't be printing and selling them.

Texts get expensive as the strategy of creating new editions, of little extra value, get put on reading lists to make the instructor's life easier and kill the used book market. And the kids have the money to buy this garbage! There was a time when I taught a certain course from a certain textbook. Revisions turned out to be in large measure renumbering of problem sets! I wrote up the problem sets I wanted and handed them out, so that there would be no confusion. Told the kids to buy earlier editions of the textbook, used. As for substance, not too hard to know or find journal articles containing the stuff one needs.

Ages ago I got through college on used books.

Yes, indeed, often the only sense in which calculus texts get updated are that the problems are renumbered. Like you, I type out the question in its entirety on the problem set, so that students can use a previous edition. These days, the publishers of calculus texts make most of their money from the automated homework system which requires a subscription for each student, even if they use a preowned copy of the book.

When I used to do tutorials, I'd post the problem numbers from the last 2 or 3 editions of the textbook, so students with any one of those could do the assignments. (I wasn't the course instructor, so I had no more control than that.)

[mahagonny]

When I published my  book. They gave me ten.

[apl68]

I remember as a kid hanging around my mother's high school English/Spanish classroom and reading her unused English reading textbooks.  Some were just old editions, others were very new-looking.  Those were probably spec textbooks that she had.  I encountered a lot of classic reading anthology standards like "The Most Dangerous Game" and "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket" that way.

[downer]

I keep on getting emails from publishers offering me free e-copies of textbooks. Not very tempting.

If we are moving online with textbooks, then they need to be better designed to use and read on laptops and tablets. I've used Vitalsource quite a lot and generally I've been unimpressed.