TexasCHLforum.com

paulhailes wrote:My brother is going to UNM next year and they claim all their book will be available on the iPad

Yeah, there's some positive reasons to move to an electronic format, and it's giving publishers nightmares While it's true that you technically "lose" ownership rights to electronic materials, there are three things that have significant potential to destroy the existing publishing market:
1) Collaborative publishing. Since material in textbooks is often just organized from existing public works (or fair representation), many texts can be created from collaboration a la wikipedia or from drawing from books that have expired copyrights. These works could (likely would0 be released under a Creative Commons licensing
2) Dramatically lower cost textbook prices with specific expansions that go with the course progression (Calc I, II, and III, for instance)
3) University library checkouts -- electronic textbooks, since they can't be damaged, can easily be "loaded" from the university library system.

There's the 4th option which already exists, and that's a rather insidious industry that photocopies textbooks and makes them freely available in PDF form if you know where to look. It's happened with both my books, although I can honestly say that I do'nt think it had an impact on book sales.

03Lightningrocks wrote:The professors are in on the scam as well.

You ain't seen nuttin.

Many years ago, I worked for two MAJOR book publishers that provided books for colleges, particularly "second tier" universities and community colleges. They spent an ENORMOUS amount of money guaranteeing churn. Revision deals inked with colleges (money into the college's pocket), Ghost-writing deals with professors that wrote a first edition and basically "sold" their name for future editions, and lots and LOTS of "special trips" where the bookstore managers and college officials are taken out for special retreats (we often flew people in to Park City, UT, as we had locked in a rate from a nice "chalet-like" suite hotel there for a large block of rooms).

College students are defenseless against a system that is 100% rigged to maximize revenue to publishers. And it's all 100% legal. It was like being a part of a smaller version of the lobbying system in Washington.