Textbook Spyder: what a fine thing for those who buy textbooks

Grandchild in college told me about this, and I don't know if everybody knows about it but me. Just in case not: A free app that searches 35 major online booksellers (new, used, ebooks) and compares prices. Textbook Spyder - Discount Textbooks at 99% Off | Compare Prices on Textbooks

 

A fine thing. Textbooks sales can be a racket. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article about a professor who decided not to assign a text co-written by his department chair, one that had been in use for a very long time. (The alternates he assigned were cheaper; one was free.) His university admonished him formally, saying he went against university policy by not assigning that book.

Anything that will save students on texts is a good thing, IMHO.

 

I came across this article that says that the authors typically only receive about $0.12 on every dollar spent on textbooks. The rest goes to textbook publishers.

Seems a lot of money could be saved if the authors self-published. The major issue there would be the fact that professors would probably work ever harder to peddle their wares upon unsuspecting students. Still, it seems like a pretty obvious thing to police. Just don't let them assign their own text books as required reading. If I am paying tens of thousands for my kid to attend a school, that tuition should pay for access to the professor's wisdom without buying his/her text.

I've had professors who, I felt, were interesting. So, I bought their book without being forced sometimes years after the class had ended. And professors routinely assign texts authored by other professors even though they don't get a cut of the action.