Advertisments coming to college textbooks

[Merika]

Advertisments coming to textbooks
JUSTIN POPE
Associated Press
Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won't pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have advertisments for companies including FedEx Kinko's and Pura Vida coffee.

Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, Web sites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model hasn't spread to college textbooks - partly for fear that faculty would consider advertisments undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 per year.

Now, a small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall - mostly for business courses - completely free. Students, or anyone else who fills out a five-minute survey, can download a PDF file of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...n/15279859.htm

I think this is a great idea. It reminds me of the schools in WI who are pimping out there stadiums and cafeterias for pretty much the same idea. As far as advertising in college text books, I think this is a win-win situation. I hope they come up with all this and it goes national before I have to start paying for them in the next year or so for my daughter.

[sweetbilly]

OMG i pay about 200 to 500 a semester for books and the prises keep going up every year, i'm sick of paying so much. When i can i get the code for the book and order it on amazon or something. I think this is a great idea, most of the kids at my school could certainly use something this. How typical of the instructors to think this is somehow undignified, elitist dingdongs. I'd just cut the adds out of the books anyway

I like the PDF idea too, but not everyone has a computer and you can't take a computer into classrooms, unless it's a notebook computer, but that's more expensive than just buying books. I don't really see this as being a possibility.

[Merika]

There's a college library who is putting all their library books online. There are positives and negatives to studying like that but it sure will save some people lots of time and money.

There is another site that has many college books onsite already. We have the link if you want to check it out. Maybe it'll save you a few bucks or keep you from having to carry books around all the time.

[sweetbilly]

That would be great Merika, send me the link please

[Merika]

Originally Posted by sweetbilly

That would be great Merika, send me the link please

Okie dokie....will send it in email .