Joseph McAllister wrote:
The shitty thing is that many of these course books are written by the
professor, or by a colleague, making the print runs relatively small.
Few if any make it to the network of bookstores other than the campus,
or near campus ones. No printing company is going to print a hundred
thousand "extra" on spec for wide distribution.
Because science and history are constantly being rewritten by the
"experts", most subjects are updated or rewritten every few years,
causing yet another printing. It's unlikely that any given course-book
in any given college is printed any more than 5000 at a time.
Making them prime candidates for Blurb-type publishing.
As time has passed since the 60's when I was being schooled, incredible
amounts of historically significant events and scientific discoveries
have been made. Many more than in the preceding 50 years. The human
population has grown by 50% since WW2. The choices in specialization in
careers is vast compared to the 50's.
When I majored in Nuclear Physics as a freshman for 1.5 trimesters in
1961, I don't think I paid more than $18.00 for my books. Turned out I
was way too scholastically underprepared to be in that field. I guess
discussing all about it with my Dad over dinner most nights doesn't
count. He had home schooled himself from a BS in Zoology in 1933 to a
Masters in Math & Physics specializing in Nuclear Energy between 1953
and 1956. Good enough to be the US Representative at the ISO
conferences at the Hague where they worked on and off for years to
standardize working condition safety in everything from a dentists
office X-ray, hospital usage, on to weapons production and power
generation. I should have paid more attention to his Math studies
instead of the dazzling Physics revelations that were happening then. I
did get to meet some of the names in the business when we'd go into MIT
which had a small reactor, and a toroidal particle accelerator with a
cloud chamber in which one could observe (and photograph) the products
of these early collisions.
But I digress (as usual). Final point about textbooks.
That is not to say a book that is superb in any given subject will not
be reprinted for general collegiate distribution, or even globally, IF
the demand for it is there.
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
[email protected]
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
