Bruce, Very nice! For these and several other reasons, electronic formats might just save the textbook. They also offers the possibility to undercut the used book market - which 1) drives the continuous worthless revisions, 2) makes it very difficult for publishers to take a risk on a textbook with fundamentally new ideas, and 3) make prices on textbooks so high that students often face huge pressure to sell-back.
I'd love to stay updated on your work integrating 3D animations into electronic textbooks. I recently initiated a group-project to write a textbook on perception. One disadvantage that the Ecological approach to perception (which I advocate) faces, is that it is very difficult to represent the concepts in 2 dimensional, still images - where as traditional approaches to perception lend themselves quite well to such a presentation. Several people on the project would be interested in trying to create a more interactive experience for the students. Eric On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 04:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood <bruce.sherw...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we >work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics >education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He >gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional >for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only >group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university >bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books >over the web. > >The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also >to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices >higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to >get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they >should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of >pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The >fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the >prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer. > >Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is >spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university >bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical >inventory. > >An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who >pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who >gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange >presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep >their college textbooks. > >One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can >imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just >a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more >attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the >work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D >animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this. > >Bruce > >On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <an...@cs.unm.edu> wrote: >> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books. >> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I >> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very >> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts >> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example, >> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the >internet >> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That >> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely >> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of >> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version. >> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading >> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting >> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you >> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more >than >> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they >> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use >> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than >the >> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book. >> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the >death >> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers >> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an >> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the >> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing >> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where >> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to >> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties >stay >> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we >> don't feel very good about the situation. >> Ed >> >> __________ >> Ed Angel >> >> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex >> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory >> (ARTS Lab) >> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico >> >> 1017 Sierra Pinon >> Santa Fe, NM 87501 >> 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu >> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel >> http://artslab.unm.edu >> http://sfcomplex.org >> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: >> >> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon: >> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101 >> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I >> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your >> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even >> though the kindle itself is black/white only. >> -- Owen >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe >Complex >> "discuss" group. >> To post to this group, send email to disc...@sfcomplex.org >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> discuss+unsubscr...@sfcomplex.org >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >> > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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