I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email:
You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached).
If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well .
Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost!
All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card. You will also be in the running to win my raffle of a Summer Reading Tote Bag including:
* $50 Amazon Gift Certificate
* Three Cups of Tea By Greg Mortenson (#1 NY Times Best Seller)
* Eat, Pray, Love By Elizabeth Gilbert (#1 NY Times Best Seller)
* The Genesis Secret By Tom Knox
* 2 beach towels
* Water bottle
* “Id Rather Be Reading” Tote Bag
I look forward to hearing from you!
A $10 gift certificate, that’s all? Where’s the big buck$ I’ve been hearing about?
P.S. Actually, the survey only has 3 questions, so really the $10 of donuts is more than fair as compensation.
P.P.S. The form also says, “There can only be 1 winner so get your name in the running fast!” What kind of raffle is it where you have to get your name in the running fast? Do they wait until they have 100 entries and then take a random sample, or what?
P.P.P.S. From the above description, the tote bag appears to contain a tote bag. Does this second tote bag contain its own tote bag? Is it tote bags all the way down?
P.P.P.P.S. Hey, this “zombies” category is really coming in handy. Thanks, Daniel Lee!
P.P.P.P.P.S. I broke down, filled out the form, and sent it in. I don’t actually like donuts, so I’ll give the gift certificate as a prize to some students during a class demonstration.
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. If I do actually win the raffle, I’ll report back and tell you if the tote bag contains a tote bag. It could come in handy in our planned trip to the beach this August!
The big money for textbook publishers isn't in textbooks like, say, Bayesian Data Analysis, with a limited market and new editions every decade. Rather, it’s in textbooks for freshmen classes, such as Moore McCabe’s Introduction To The Practice of Statistics, with thousands of books being sold each semester at each institution, and constant minor revisions to force students to purchase new versions.
Cody: Yes, I realize that. I teach introductory statistics. I'm now writing my own book which I will distribute for free or at a very low cost. I think those $150 textbooks are a scam.
You ought to try to bargain them up. Ten bucks and a raffle ticket is chump change. I once got offered $8,000 to adopt a textbook.
There's http://www.opentextbook.org .
Many years ago I was persuaded to write a boo on research methods for first year psychology students. It should have been called 'scrape your way through Psych Research Methods". Eventually (maybe 7 years) it sold out its first printing (500 copies) and the publisher (surprisingly) decided not to bother printing any more.
After that I turned it into a wiki, and GPL'd it – on the grounds that there are all kinds of things that were wrong, and they could be fixed. It's actually very rare for anyone to edit it, and when they do, they fix a typo. I stuck some ads on there too, and it makes back about 10% of the $5/month that it costs me to host it. It gets about 200 hits per day though. It could probably do better if I optimised it better. It's at http://www.researchmethodsinpsychology.com.
A gift certificate for Dunkin Donuts rather than Starbucks? Is this because your address is in the Northeast?
Sanjay: Indeed, your $8000 story is what I was thinking of. $10 of donuts was a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand, all I had to do was fill out a form–I didn't actually have to adopt their book (which, in any case, I've not yet seen; I assume it was sent to my New York address).
I hope the third tote bag is a "Ego Rather Be Reading" tote bag. Seems that would make more sense, anyway.
Andrew,
lulu.com does an excellent job distributing texts for low cost. I have purchased both hard and soft cover books from lulu, and found them both to be of excellent quality.
Bruce
I remember R. Feynman reviewed this school "textbook" scam in his book "Surely Your Joking..".
The scam is far more pernicious in grade Schools because it feeds substandard books to impressionable minds, because the person making the decision is far removed from the situation (more so than a college professor such as yourself).