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.