Textbook manifesto (2016)
A lot of people tend to harp on the "textbooks are too expensive" issue, and I think this correctly identifies one of the problems:  textbook price is not an issue to many professors.  Unfortunately, there's no actual solution to that presented.<p>> If you can’t find one, write one. It’s not that hard.<p>I've used three or four textbooks written by my professor, and I can't say the quality was all that great.  Considering that the set of professors who currently choose to write their own textbooks probably skews toward professors who are good at writing textbooks, I'm not super high on this plan.<p>> Students: You should go on strike. If your textbook costs more than $50, don’t buy it. If it has more than 500 pages, don’t read it. There’s just no excuse for bad books.<p>Many students already do this.  It's not uncommon for students to not buy a single textbook in a semester.  In fact, the professors that do care about textbook price generally make textbooks optional.  It turns out that's a lot easier than writing your own textbook and somehow selling it for cheap.