Professors, replace your textbooks!

If the book industry is changing, it can only be for the good as far as law school texts are concerned. The books are huge, large parts of them are left unassigned in many courses, and they are ridiculously expensive. And to the surprise of most non-lawyers, they are largely useless outside of law school; one does not refer to one’s casebooks when doing legal research as a lawyer.

As David W. Lewis writes, what is true for law school texts is true for all textbooks:

It is clear to anyone who looks at the state of textbooks today that the system is broken. It does not work well for anyone, but it is especially hard on students, who typically pay $1,000 a year or more for textbooks.

And so, “[e]veryone with a financial stake in the textbook business is looking for a new model. That is especially true for publishers, but also for bookstores and authors.”  Among Lewis’s suggestions  are the following:

• Encourage and embrace rental programs.

• Establish metrics for textbook costs and goals for their reduction.

• Set up an investment fund that would allow faculty members, programs, and departments to acquire or create alternative content.

I have made some progress (not much, but far more than most) in creating alternative content.