The current state of textbook prices getting a lot of attention lately….bad press actually.  Can you blame anyone (besides the textbook publishers)?  Our first textbook Worldwide Differential Calculus is free for PDF download and $40 for a print copy, compared to the market leading Jim Stewart Calculus textbook for over $200.  That is astronomical!!  We are fine tuning our textbook to provide the same amount of sample problems, examples, and exposition as all the leading calculus books, so there should be no reason why anyone would choose any other book.

Watch out big publishers…only a matter of time before us small guys take a big bite out of your outdated business model.

Some Calculus Texts go digital

By Jenna Haines

Published: Monday, September 21, 2009

Some students taking Calculus 1 do not have to lug around a traditional textbook this semester. Mathematics professor David Massey has published an e-textbook covering the material. 
Massey founded the Worldwide Center for Mathematics (WCM) in 2008 to provide a low-cost textbook option for students with a tight budget. “Worldwide Differential Calculus” contains a print text, an online version in PDF form, a DVD of prerecorded lectures about the material, and an additional study guide and solution manual. All of these features can be purchased independently, the textbook for between $40 and $50, and the DVD for $12.50, said Elgin Stallard, a 1999 Northeastern alumnus and business manager of WCM.

Students can buy only what they need and at prices almost 50 percent lower  than conventional textbooks, Stallard said.  “Our goal is to give a better learning platform and provide better pricing,” Stallard says. “We want to give students an option so they are not forced to buy what they don’t need.”  Professor Robert Case, who teaches Calculus 1 for Science and Engineering, has incorporated the textbook into his curriculum, using it as a supplementary text mostly for his honors section. 

While Case said that he sees benefits to this text, he said there are also some drawbacks of electronic texts.  “The technology can be helpful in many ways, as was Gutenberg’s printing technology, especially in the form of creating access of many more people to knowledge,” Case wrote in an e-mail. “But we haven’t yet begun to understand how to use this in a truly wise way yet.” 

Elgin Stallard said other universities in the area are also using this book as a reference for students.  The textbook is designed so professors can customize it to fit their teaching style and even record their own lectures to make available for students. This offers a new tool for professors.

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