Used Books Blog

My recent post on Textbook Torrents has been both popular and controversial. Though still off line the latest seems to indicate we haven’t seen the end of Textbook Torrents.

In the interim, I’m compiling a list of sites where students can gain access to free textbooks.

Textbook Revolution

“TBR’s mission is to drive the adoption of free textbooks by teachers and professors. We want to get these books into classrooms. Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world.”

Wikibooks

“Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003, since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 30,398 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you!”

Open Text Book

“Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation”

Scribd

“Through Scribd.com, iPaper, and the Scribd Platform, Scribd is changing the way people view, publish, and monetize documents. Through our vast library of content and our unique document display technology, we hope to unlock the information in the world’s documents and make it readily accessible to everyone.”

Scribd doesn’t specifically aim to provide free textbooks but there seem to be many available. Searches for specific titles or subjects often bring back a substantial list of results. Outside of textbooks, Scribd can be used as a deep source of student contributed notes.

Nearly all of the sites above are not in violation of any copyright laws. Scribd is the exception, but only because they allow users to upload materials. However, they seem responsive to DMCA take down notices.

This list is not comprehensive, but I believe represents the largest and best of the bunch. Others are extremely narrow in focus, abandoned or overrun with advertising ploys. Please let me know if I’ve missed any that merit inclusion on this list.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Princeton University Press will join other notable University Presses such as Yale University Press, Oxford University Press and The University of California Press in making portions of their catalogs available on Kindle.

University Presses, even the big ones, have often found it difficult to survive, much less flourish. The Kindle could help these struggling presses to find greener pastures. Details on the nature of these relationships is still unknown.

The university presses participating in Kindle were reluctant to describe the specific financial arrangements they have with Amazon (which also declined to discuss them), but said that they were revenue-sharing deals, and that preparing the books for release on Kindle was not particularly burdensome or expensive.

I’d be very interested to know exactly what the revenue sharing deal is at present. Kindle is certainly working hard to make more and more titles available for download. The question is whether this is a type of introductory offer type of deal, sweet at the beginning and then onerous as it moves forward when you’re essentially addicted to the platform. (I’m looking at you Comcast.)

Barbara Fister has a great comment to the Inside Higher Ed piece:

I don’t have any objection to UPs trying this revenue stream (even self-published authors are doing it), but I doubt the Kindle will revolutionize the textbook market.

First, if illustrations and color and permission-based images are problematic, that’s a hurdle. Second, the publisher sets the price, and they haven’t shown much inclination to price electronic versions at a steep enough discount to tempt students in huge numbers. Third — students object to paying a lot for a book that they can’t share or resell, and they won’t be all that thrilled that they can’t buy a used copy. (I’m skeptical that you can download a Kindle book to your computer — isn’t that a violation of their terms of service?)

Add to that students in Montana and Alaska are outta luck (the wireless network that Amazon uses doesn’t reach there) and students would be forced to spend a lot of money for the a gadget that limits their shopping to a single store.

The price is certainly an issue. The Kindle versions come at what seems like a 10% discount. It would take a substantial number of titles to offset the $300+ cost of the Kindle itself. In addition, you can’t resell these books.

In ‘analog’ form, you can sell a number of these titles back to a University Bookstore or independent bookseller for more than 10% of the purchase price. I recall with great glee the end of the semester when I’d sell back my textbooks to the University Bookstore. Not all were accepted and I probably only got 20% to 50% of the original purchase price but … it was enough for a weekend splurge at the local watering hole.

This one currently lands in the A for effort pile, but incomplete as the grade of record.

Textbook Torrents is using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, to let students download textbooks for free. The site not only allows Torrents for those open textbooks but allows users to scan and upload other textbooks.

Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren’t very many scanned texts out there, so let’s change that.

A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it’s fair game.

Sites like Textbook Torrents are reacting to the increasingly high cost of textbooks. According to a 2004 CALPIRG study, the average textbook costs $102 and students spent almost $900 a school year on textbooks. Many believe these prices are artificially high, creating windfall profit centers for publishers on the backs of students who essentially must purchase these textbooks.

The used textbook marketplace has flourished because of these high prices, though the shelf life of a textbook seems to be decreasing as publishers crank out updates and editions on a more regular basis. The Amazon Kindle is also delivering textbooks via digital download.

It’s no surprise that students are using new technology to defray the cost of their education. Obviously the textbook landscape would collapse if the majority of students sourced their textbooks via Torrents - authors need to be compensated, publishers need to run a business.

But publishers shouldn’t squawk too much about these developments. High textbook prices were the accelerant to the flux in the textbook market. Now they’re scrambling to protect their cash cow in the encroaching digital age.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:00pm)

As noted by readers, the textbooktorrents.com website is currently offline. The error data (”not found on this server”) makes me believe that the owner took it down or that the host (DreamHost) took it down. Please note that Google still has pages from textbooktorrents.com in their index. Google hasn’t banned the site, it’s simply not ranking high because there’s no longer any relevant content on these pages.

I’m guessing this disappearing act is due to legal pressure brought by publishers. The domain doesn’t expire until January 2011. Perhaps textbooktorrents.com will come back when a new host is secured … or not if the publisher pressure was simply too much to handle.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:57pm)

I emailed DreamHost in what I thought would be a vain attempt to gain some information on the Textbook Torrents situation. To my pleasant surprise, DreamHost responded to my inquiry within the hour. Below is the text of that email:

We received very long DMCA takedown notices from publishers of the content in question. The site was further closed down due to violations of our Terms of Service due to it’s illegal facilitation of the distribution of copyrighted content without the copyright owners consent.

While I sympathize with students and the cost of textbooks, you can’t fault DreamHost for pulling the plug. Based on the information provided above, I’d be surprised if any major US host would touch Textbook Torrents at this point.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 30, 2008 - 8:22am)

Textbooktorrents.com is still down as we hit the height of textbook season. I’ll continue to look for signs of life and encourage anyone with information to comment or contact me directly. In the interim, students can check out my list of other free textbook sites.

Textbook Torrent Update (July 30, 2008 - 9:02am)

Thank you to xGeNeSisx who tipped us off that Textbook Torrents is up and running but at a different address: http://85.17.226.223/