Re: [Phys-L] textbook price / quality

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 12/17/2015 10:12 PM, Daniel V. Schroeder wrote:

> I'd also like to respond to the remark about self-published text
> materials not being maintained over time.  The fact is, this is
> usually the case for commercially published textbooks as well.  As
> long as a textbook is reasonably polished to begin with, I don't see
> why it should need frequent maintenance.

I'd say that shoe is on the other foot.  There are some online
texts that are being maintained on a daily basis.  I know because
I send corrections to the author and see immediate results.

As for "polish" ... I realize the following wasn't what DVS meant
by the word, but speaking for myself, I see a lot of books put out
by Big Name publishers at bloodthirsty prices that are "polished"
only in the most superficial sense:
  Turd Polishing
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI

That is to say, the work seems shiny and glitzy at first glance,
but if you look into it, you find bad pedagogy and wrong physics.
In some cases I reckon I could find 1000 conceptual errors in a 
1000-page book, without working very hard.  (That's not counting 
typos, and not counting multiple occurrences of the same error.)

As a rule, publishers do not care about bad pedagogy and/or wrong
physics.  The imprimatur of a Big Name publisher means nothing.
The list of dozens and dozens of "reviewers" in the introduction
means nothing.

As a rule, publishers seriously underestimate how much work is 
required to produce a high-quality textbook.

> From a overall system point of view, the educational system is
grossly mismanaged.  There is far too much waste due to duplication
of effort.  Specifically, due to the lack of good textbooks, huge
numbers of teachers spend time preparing their own "notes" that
serve as the de_facto text for one course, but are not used by
anybody else.  If you added up all the resources spent on such
endeavors, it would be more than enough (more by a large factor)
to pay for creating a set of high-quality textbooks and other
materials (including exercises and assessments).  It is better
to have a small number of high-quality products than a large
number of low-quality products.  Rewarding teamwork so as to
channel the overall effort into non-wasteful directions is the 
absolute core of the management job description.

Administrators in the educational «system» are doing a terrible
job of this.  Publishers are doing a terrible job of this.