Xref: utzoo sci.math:4871 sci.physics:4914 comp.edu:1459 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!nada.kth.se!bjornl From: bjornl@tds.kth.se (Bj|rn Lisper) Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.physics,comp.edu Subject: Re: How to beat the high cost of text books! Message-ID: Date: 21 Nov 88 09:29:51 GMT References: <2219@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: news@nada.kth.se Organization: The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm Lines: 22 In-reply-to: johnm@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com's message of 19 Nov 88 20:58:54 GMT In article johnm@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (John Murray) writes: >Why not abolish the publishers' restrictions on importing textbooks into >the US? So-called "International Editions" of many common US textbooks >are produced by the same publishing corporations for sale in Europe and >elsewhere, and cost maybe one quarter the price of the US edition. A quarter of the price...this may be true in some places, but certainly not in others. I live in Sweden, a notorious high-cost country, and here the price of textbooks in computer science (my principal area of interest) is certainly not a quarter of the U.S. price. I'd rather say these books are more expensive here than in the U.S. I guess the same holds in other areas, like math. And yes, I'm talking about textbooks in English. The standard ones. Textbooks in Swedish (when available) are, by the way, hardly cheaper. Thus, the original idea about an on-line textbook archive seems like a great one to me. Just make sure that this archive has a mail request facility, so that we without FTP access can benefit too.... Bjorn Lisper