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John Adams


Beerball

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steal everything.

 

great article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/technolo...amp;oref=slogin

 

i still have my organic chemistry book, btw

 

Good for the kids. Just getting my bachelors completely finished in May, I was so relieved the last couple semesters, when I observed and student taught, because I didn't have to buy books. There was one semester where I spent $1400 on math books only to use 1 for each class ;) (the fyou smiley would have been better). You know that it doesn't cost the publishers $300 for a 500 page book on math, and you sure as hell know that there is not a huge difference from edition to edition. This is the exploitation of college kids' pocketbooks. So, yeah there is a good reason for the students to pirate the books instead of paying $300 for something you may never use after you are done with the course.

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Good for the kids. Just getting my bachelors completely finished in May, I was so relieved the last couple semesters, when I observed and student taught, because I didn't have to buy books. There was one semester where I spent $1400 on math books only to use 1 for each class ;) (the fyou smiley would have been better). You know that it doesn't cost the publishers $300 for a 500 page book on math, and you sure as hell know that there is not a huge difference from edition to edition. This is the exploitation of college kids' pocketbooks. So, yeah there is a good reason for the students to pirate the books instead of paying $300 for something you may never use after you are done with the course.

I've got at least two boxes of books in my closet that I kept for one of two reasons - I thought some might have some use as a reference down the road (some did, but most didn't) and others I was offered damn near next to nothing on buy-back. Spent $50, 75, 100 on some of my books and they offer me $3 or $5. What a joke. Not to mention trips to off-campus copy centers to pick up reading packets at $15-25 per packet. I wish document scanning, PDF downloading and other options were available when I was in school. I'd rather have a bloated hard drive than a closet bulging with books and copy packets not longer needed....

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I blame the schools for their greed in the used book process. Consider this, they sell a book for $150 brand new, buy it back from the student for like $25 and then flip it back as a used version for like $110. None of that profit is being given back to the publishers or authors. They are effectively cut out of the loop as their product is flipped back and forth continually while the school gets rich. The only way to stop this cycle is to create a "new" edition every year (that basically just renumbers the pages) so that they can get paid again. If the schools kicked back a little of the disgusting profit they make when they buy back from the students, then I don't believe there would be nearly as big an incentive for the publishers/authors to "revise" editions almost every year.

 

Basically the school screws the author, the author screws back the school and the student is the one who takes all of it in the @ss.

 

JMO...

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