I received an email from a student that has started bothering me. The student is enrolled in a “technology for teachers” course at another institution that uses our book. The student seems to have been searching the Internet for resources associated with the book and located our personal development web site (we maintain a protected site that we use to develop material related to the book before we offer the material to our publisher and we also make this material available to those who purchase the book). The student wrote to ask me if I would grant access to the web site because he cannot afford to purchase the book.
I would like to think that I am very sensitive to the cost issue and I have written often about the factors that have created this situation. I also understand the financial difficulty facing some students as they struggle to obtain an education. As a parent, I understand the costs associated with sending a son or daughter to college. I wonder what assumptions students make about those of us who spend some of our time writing. Do they understand that one motive may be to help our own children attend college? Are those assumptions somehow different than assumptions made about the folks who spend some of their time frying hamburgers, building cars, or teaching classes.
I happen to feel that the Internet may allow a cost-effective way to bring down the cost of books. I would like to see short $29 books allowing a fixed time access to a much larger body of online content. Access to the online content might exist for a year. After that period of time, an additional fee would be charged. Reselling the book in this hybrid approach would not allow continued use of the web material and thus deliver a lower quality (but cheaper) product than the original purchase.
The high cost of books is simply not the responsibility of the publishing companies or the authors. We have to make a return on our investment of time or resources on the first sale. Your book store makes all of the profit after that. The book store makes considerably more money for putting the book back on the shelf that I received for writing the book in the first place.
I provided the student a way to access resources online. I should have suggested that he ask the book store for a free used copy.
