<p>so, lets have a vote</p>
<p>option A: Those textbook companies know we have to buy their books regardless, and extort ridiculous prices. Screw them, let's scan</p>
<p>option B: authors put lots of time and effort to create these textbooks, and deserve to make a living off of them. Scanning is illegal and immoral.</p>
<p>So just add your numbers on</p>
<p>A: 1</p>
<p>B: 0</p>
<p>Wait, people do this? -Honest question</p>
<p>Most people that write textbooks, at least in the sciences, don’t make a living off of them. The only people that really see any worthwhile amounts of money are those that write freshman-level texts which change edition every two years.</p>
<p>Is this supposed to be a twist on the earlier illegally downloading mp3s topic? If so, I’m far too lazy to waste time scanning my textbooks. I’d rather just buy.</p>
<p>I rent. It’s wayyyy cheaper and…well…it’s way cheaper.</p>
<p>Whenever I have an ebook/textbook on my computer, mostly for summer classes, I end up not reading any of it because I hate reading things like that on the computer and the three different book companies I’ve used have weird ways of letting you view/scroll that get on my nerves. </p>
<p>So yeah I wouldn’t scan, I’d just buy the book if I could. Also scanning would waste so much time it’s not even worth it.</p>
<p>Last year I had this Microecon. workbook that the teacher assigned problems from. He had a syllabus with the exact pages that he wanted. I figured I would scan all the pages and use the sheets to do my homeworks (which was FAR more convenient). </p>
<p>But this is for something small. An entire textbook however is out of the question… It probably would cost you too much time anyways to successfully make a reasonable copy.</p>
<p>So -no, don’t be cheap. If you buy and sell all of your books, then you should end up without too much loss. Plus you can get a LOT of great deals. This year I got a Multivariable book UNTOUCHED that runs for $150 or so for only $40… thats barely 1/3 of the actual cost. I have been inspecting this book for days to find out what is wrong with it.</p>
<p>It’s not even an ethics issue. Scanning an entire textbook would be waaaaay too time consuming unless you had one of those professional book scanners with a page turner, and even then the expense of that isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>People scan, yes.</p>
<p>My friend didn’t buy this book and someone scanned it for him.</p>
<p>Authors can make TONS of money from writing textbooks.
[An</a> ‘Accordion’ of Wood and Glass - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB123869600484183257%26articleTabs%3Darticle]An”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB123869600484183257%26articleTabs%3Darticle)
James Stewart… Oh, how I envy him.</p>
<p>I make money on my textbooks. How?</p>
<p>Buy them new dirt cheap. Sell used on eBay for higher price. Voila. Cash in pocket.</p>
<p>There was a tracker a while back called Textbooktorrents.com that got closed down a while ago. For downloading books you could go to gigapedia. You could post scans there probably but I wouldn’t ever scan a book. Like others said, it’s way too time consuming. </p>
<p>I’ll probably download what I can, and buy what I can’t download rather than asking a friend or someone to scan it for me.</p>
<p>I am poor. I just did my budgeting for the 1st month of college. I have $5 to spend on textbooks next semester. I will do whatever it takes to avoid paying. I wouldn’t bother scanning a textbook, but I definitely am willing to borrow books from friends, check out books from the library, use PDF files of books etc. Anything that avoids me wasting $600/semester on textbooks that I barely use anyways.</p>
<p>I found it rather hard to find scanned textbooks, even tried the Great Science Texts DVD library torrent. You can always buy used textbooks or even new textbooks from other sellers on Amazon. Heck I got a brand new physics textbook(shrink wrapped and with a kit) published this year for over 70% off Amazon’s and the publisher’s retail price from a 3rd party seller on amazon.
And to play with economics:
Street price - publisher’s
Market price - 3rd party sellers/resellers where supply and demand dynamics actually exist.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Note that Stewart also wrote one of the most widely used textbooks out there. How much do you think a professor earns on a graduate text about applied optics relative to the amount of time put into it?</p>
<p>C: I don’t give a poop whether people want to scan or not.</p>
<p>my daughter photocopies, scans and my fav, takes pictures of them with her digital camera.
they have all the books needed at the school library, but you cannot check them out, you can only use them IN the library for an hour. So, she takes her digi cam, and takes pics of all the chapters needed.</p>
<p>
Just like in any industry, the specialized and most subjective works will be looked into less than other more popular, widely-used works. Almost all the money goes to the publishing company, just like in the music industry. Authors need to be excessively famous to make money from just writing. If the textbook publishers weren’t so greedy and republished textbooks with new editions each year with the exact same substance and try to rip off students for $150-200/textbook…
That’s probably just asking too much, though.</p>
<p>If they didn’t constantly make new editions then nobody would make money off of the industry. :p</p>
<p>I guess maybe we can see the rip-off freshmen texts as a way to subsidize the more specialized texts that’ll be lucky to sell a thousand copies.</p>