Evolving From Self Publishing to Self Publishers
Charles Severance (csev@umich.edu)

Introduction

When the MIT Open Courseware (OCW) was created in 2001, it brought a culture of free and open content to universities.   Universities and faculty members quickly realized that their own course materials have little monetary value and so they rushed to release their materials under open licenses.   Creative Commons was also founded in 2001 that provided a range of copyright licenses that made it easier to choose an appropriate license for each item that was released.  The Connexions project from Rice University was founded in 1999 with the goal of creating a frictionless environment to remix and publish open educational resources both online and in print.

There have been many successful efforts like Siyavula  and College Open Textbooks to raise funds and support the creation of free and open textbook replacements for core courses.  Lulu and Amazon’s Createspace were founded in 2002 and allow print versions of low-cost self-published books to be sold and distributed by authors.

But in 2014, even with all these well-funded and successful efforts that have produced high quality and free/low cost text books, if you walk into the average community college bookstore, you still see a Calculus or Python textbook from Pearson that costs nearly $200 as the required textbook for most of the large enrollment courses.  Some estimates say that the nearly 40% of the cost of a community college education is the cost of textbooks.

If you listen to many in the OER and Open Book movement, they tend to place the blame on the community college teachers and administrators who are just stuck in their old habits and afraid to try something new.

I don’t place the blame on those making the textbook selection.  I think that textbooks from Pearson and other publishers cost $200 because paying $200 per student to a publisher is the most efficient way to deliver a community college education.  In the rest of this article I look at why a $200 textbook from a publisher is a good value and why a $10 open text book is not a good value.  And then look at how our approach needs to change to make a $10 textbook the best value for adopting teachers and institutions.

I will focus on community colleges in the United States because this is where the contrasts are so stark.  The positions I take apply in both in other areas but to a lesser degree.

The Publisher Value Proposition

The least important part of the value proposition of an expensive textbook from a large publisher is the book itself and the content of the book.

The first problem that anyone selecting a textbook is overwhelmed with options.  If you search Amazon for “Python”, you find over 4,000 books.  If you search Pearson, you find 64 results, and if you work through their “browse by discipline” you quickly narrow your search until you are looking at three Python books that support MyProgrammingLab.  Assuming that Pearson editors have chosen wisely, you are looking at choosing between three very safe choices.

Another issue that is particular to community Colleges is the transferability of a course to a four-year course.  One of the easiest ways to communicate that the depth and rigor of a community college course is equivalent to a course at a four-year school is to choose a book that is widely known and widely adopted at many four-year schools teaching equivalent courses.  When the publisher lists the other schools that are using the book, it makes the choice even easier.

Another issue for many community colleges is the use of part-time adjuncts to teach one of many sections of large-enrollment classes.  Since many of these adjuncts are put under contract only a few weeks before the semester starts, they need a lot of help with classroom materials (i.e. slides, etc..) and homework problems that are well aligned to the text book.  This is where an ancillary system like MyProgrammingLab or MyMathLab is so important.   Instructors are given problem sets, solutions, slides, homework exercises, and sometimes even automatic homework graders that send grades back to a Learning Management System.  This systems insure that there is consistency across adjuncts and their overall workload is reduced in terms of grading and class preparation so they can focus on interacting with the students.

Ultimately these “secondary” concerns are so significant that they greatly overwhelm the issue of the cost to the student.  In general unless there is some forcing function from a state legislature or university administration, few instructors or deans will go out on a limb and switch to a $10 self-published textbook.  

When economics cannot be ignored as in emerging economies or low-income areas, open textbooks can be adopted out of pure economic necessity.   But in this case, those students and teachers are not benefitting from the additional value that publishers provide beyond the book.  This increases the workload for the teacher and makes it more challenging for the student.

From Self Publishing to Self Publishers

The open textbook efforts should not stop when they have created an open textbook.  If they want to truly rival publisher provided offerings, they need to provide an equivalent experience for the adopting institutions, students, and teachers.  In addition to a free book, open text advocates must build and provide:

Instructor materials such as slides, problem sets and sample exams

Online value added services that provide homework problems, auto graders for assignments, and video and text tutorial materials for students who are struggling.

Teacher training for teachers who are new to the material

Marketing and communications to let teachers know about these high quality free and open materials.  We need organizations that select and promote the best open materials to teachers, institutions, and administrators.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/28/report-high-textbook-prices-have-college-students-struggling