There's no such policy here (in fact, I suspect that one of my colleague's principal source of sales is to students here), but when I was in grad school, Tom Cornsweet photocopied his Perception text so that we wouldn't have to buy it -- he just liked his best, but felt that it was wrong to make money off his students.
But the other thing I wanted to comment on is that best-selling texts can indeed be a lucrative gig. About 20 years ago I was approached by a publisher who asked me to consider a combined methods/stats text. She said that (in those days!) in her market, if the text was good (sold well) I could count on $80k the first year and about $40k the second, and then the two-year-revision would come out.... I do not think, though, that the high cost of books is due to royalties to authors. I think it's more due to the apparent need for (even math) texts to be revised and sold as "new" every two years. The publishers dangle a big bag of money in front of an academic and convince him or her of the need for a revision, which takes considerably less work than the initial writing, but yields the same in profits. Something does need to change the high prices of texts, but I'm not sure that all that much money is going to the authors. m ------ "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." -- Margaret Wheatley -----Original Message----- From: Peterson, Douglas (USD) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:33 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Obama thinks textbook writers are scammers I doubt anyone makes a mint either but just in case it is possible I thought most institutions have a policy where authors can not collect royalties on books assigned for their own course? Doug Doug Peterson, PhD Director of University Honors Associate Professor of Psychology The University of South Dakota 414 E. Clark Vermillion SD 57069 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> phone (Honors): (605) 677-5223 phone (Psychology): (605) 677-5295 From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:13 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Obama thinks textbook writers are scammers Check out the following item from today's Inside Higher Ed: If Barack Obama is elected president, students upset about textbook prices may have an ally. While he hasn't proposed any legislation on the topic, he used an appearance Friday at the University of Texas-Pan American to criticize the way professors benefit from writing expensive texts. The Chicago Tribune <http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/obama_on_a_coll ege_textbook_ra.html> quoted him as saying: "Books are a big scam. I taught law at the University of Chicago for 10 years, and one of the biggest scams is law professors write their own textbooks and then assign it to their students. They make a mint. It's a huge racket. The Wall Street Journal <http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/22/obama-to-students-be-careful-w ith-those-credit-cards/?mod=googlenews_wsj> reported that in a discussion in which Obama reiterated his criticism of private student loans, he also urged students to be careful about their own spending. "Just be careful about those credit cards, all right? Don't eat out as much," the Journal quoted him saying. I can't speak for law schools, but I don't know that anyone makes "a mint" on textbooks. If it doesn't sell well beyond one's own classes, it isn't going to be around for very long, I would guess. And doesn't it seem reasonable that if you spend a great deal of time an effort laying out a particular topic in the way you think it should be taught, that you would want to also use that book in order to teach it that way? Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ "Part of respecting another person is taking the time to criticise his or her views." - Melissa Lane, in a Guardian obituary for philosopher Peter Lipton ================================= --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
