Preston McAfee of the California Institute of Technology is a little unimpressed with publishers:
“Academics do an enormous amount of work editing journals and writing articles and now publishers have broken an implicit contract with academics, in which we gave our time and they weren’t too greedy. Sometimes articles cost $20 to download, and principles books regularly sell for over $100. They issue new editions frequently to kill off the used book market, and the rapidity of new editions contributes to errors and bloat.”
So he has made his book “Introduction to Economic Analysis” available as a free download under a creative commons license. For those wanting a hard copy (but not the hassle of printing out the pdf), it is also available for $11.60 as a print-on-demand book from lulu.com. Plus there are sample syllabi and powerpoint slides available online.
McAfee invites comments and corrections and says he will make regular updates. Sounds like a good deal to me.
[image by Christopher Vasquez]
