Textbooks: The new pirated material

Textbooks, Free and Illegal, Online talks about the fact that texts are expensive and that people can often download them online.

Faced with soaring prices for textbooks, cash-strapped students have discovered a tempting, effective, but illicit alternative – pirated electronic books, available for free over the Internet.

“We think it’s a significant problem,” said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich.

I am appalled at the price of textbooks. Yes, as a teacher I get my books free, but both my sons are in college. I paid $185 for a paperback book that is 11×7 and had about 180 pages. Doesn’t that seem a little excessive? When you sell them back, you get about $15. Then the store resells them for $185. That’s right. The paperback I bought was used.

Booksellers don’t want the price of texts to go down. The publishing companies have a golden goose.

So why would they do something about it?

If I ever have a choice, I’ll go for cheaper books. Or ones we can get from Amazon or some other bookseller for less than a dollar a page.

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