textbooks

A textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are classified by both the target audience and the subject. Textbooks are usually published by specialty printers to serve every request for an understanding of every subject that can be taught. It is a big business that requires mass volume sales to make the publications profitable. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format with hard covers, some can now be viewed Online textbooksonline.Textbooks emerged as teaching instruments with Johann Gutenberg's printing press. Early textbooks were used by teachers, who relied on the books for lesson guidance. Later books were printed for children, and have become the primary teaching instrument for most children since the 19th century.

United States - mainEducation in the United States In most colleges in the United States, textbooks are usually chosen by the professor teaching the academic course. In most K-12 public schools, a local school board votes on which textbooks to purchase from a selection of books that have been approved by the state Department of Education. Teachers are usually not required to use textbooks, however, and many prefer to use other materials instead.Textbook publishing in the U.S. is a business primarily aimed at large states, especially California and Texas. This is due to state purchasing controls over the books. When publishers succeed in making a sale to either or both states, they are guaranteed a large print run and therefore a profitable product. The Texas State Board of Education spends in excess of $600 million on its central purchasing of textbooks.Because textbook publishing is a competitive business, when mistakes occur they are costly to remedy and when objections to either the inclusion or the exclusion of material are voiced, the publishers attempt to compromise in an effort to make the sale. As a result of this procedure errors have been known to crop up in textbooks covering almost every subject.

High school - In recent years, high school textbooks of United States history have come under increasing criticism. Authors such as Howard Zinn (''A People's History of the United States'') and James W. Loewen (''Lies My Teacher Told Me'') make the claim that U.S. History textbooks' mythical untruths and omissions paint a whitewashed picture that bears little resemblance to what most students learn in universities. Selectively retelling history, through textbooks or other literature, has been practiced in many societies, from ancient Rome to the Soviet Union. History textbooks are not subjected to Peer reviewreview by professional academics, nor can authorship of a high school textbook be used to advance an academic toward tenure at a university. The content of history textbooks thus lies entirely outside the academic forum of fact and social science and is instead determined by the political forces of state adoption boards and ideological pressure groups.

College - Many university students complain of unreasonably high textbook costs, sometimes US$800 or more per year. They often claim that this represents price gouging on the part of the publisher. Furthermore, they contend that publishers print new editions of a textbook with unnecessary frequency, solely to make older editions of their books obsolete; this has the effect of squashing the used-textbook market, where publishers make no money from sales. Additionally, some publishers have started bundling extra materials such as CD's and website access cards to textbooks in the hopes of increasing the value of the textbook. Some students feel this is a ploy by the publishing company to limit used book sales, as the college bookstores tend to order these packages instead of the text book by itself. Bookstores do this because they fear offending the professors who order these packages, most of whom never make it clear if they require materials from the extra bundled items or if they are solely teaching from the textbook.Publishers say that textbooks are indeed as expensive to produce as their prices indicate. Textbooks have a very limited market—almost exclusively college students who need the book for a course—and would be unprofitable to produce if they were priced any lower. Textbooks are often thick, printed on heavy paper, and printed in color, all of which dramatically increase their cost. Some publishers sell copies of their textbooks to foreign markets at a much lower cost. The rationale is that these sales are additional, unpredictable income and should not be a factor in the pricing of textbooks in America. These books must be sold at a competitive price in the foreign market which leads to resentment from some students of the American market. Additionally, textbooks (especially anthologies) often contain a lot of copyrighted material including photos, artwork and previously-published articles or chapters. The permissions fees for printing this material are a substantial (but often-overlooked) cost of the publishing process. Because such rights fees are based on the breadth of distribution, putting these materials on the World Wide Web is seldom an economically feasible alternative. Contrary to popular opinion, obtaining the world rights necessary to publish on the Web can actually incur more costs than would a printed textbook with limited distribution. The cost of world rights is also one reason why publishers have purposefully excluded some books from the U.S. market.Sometimes students and parents claim that certain textbooks have been selected for use because of factors irrelevant to their teaching efficacy. The most common complaint at the university level is that professors will use a textbook written by themselves or their colleagues.

Used textbook market - As with many media products, a market for used textbooks exists. The goal of such trade is to acquire textbooks for less money than the price of new copies or to sell unneeded books to recoup some or all of their purchase price. Some college-run bookstores allow students to sell their textbooks back to the store for a fraction of the books' original price. These books are usually then marked as "used" and resold in the store at a discounted price. This is often done at a profit for the store. Students also tend to sell textbooks amongst themselves. After completing a course, sellers will often seek out members of the next enrolling class, people who are likely to be interested in purchasing the required books. This may be done by posting flyers to advertise the sale of the books, browsing class listings on websites like Facebook.com or BooksForSchool.ca or simply soliciting individuals who are shopping in the college bookstore for the same titles that are wished to be sold. Many larger schools have independent websites set up for the purpose of facilitating such trade. These often operate much like digital classified ads, allowing students to list their items for sale and browse for those they wish to acquire.Used textbooks are also sold on a national and even global scale through online merchant and auction websites. Probably most prominent among these are Amazon.comAmazon Marketplace, Half.com, and Abebooks which allow shoppers to search many major new and used book sellers at a time for specific titles. Such services can usually locate books based on their title, ISBN number or UPC.

See also -

Wikibooks wikibooks.org - A sister project to Wikipedia whose goal is to create textbooks.

External links -

edutopia.org - How Textbooks Get Made: Confessions of a Textbook Editor

ericdigests.org - History Textbook Controversies in Japan

ericdigests.org - Improving the Use of Elementary Social Studies Textbooks

ericdigests.org - High School Biology Textbooks Do Not Meet National Standards

text-books.info - Information On Textbooks

textbookleague.org - The Textbook League

answers.google.com - Google Answers thread on the legality of purchasing international versions of textbooks

uh.edu - Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50 Purchased Overseas

collegetoad.com - university and college textbooksCategory:Books by typede:Lehrbuchfr:Traité !(littérature)ja:教ķ 85;書 DEBUG REDIRECT (textbook)

The College Cafe
Buy, Sell and Trade with your fellow students. In addition please review a professor using our teacher evaluation forms
http://www.thecollegecafe.com/

Bookwurm - German Book Import, DVD Players, Movies
plus magazines & newspapers, movies, audiobooks, multi-region DVD players, software, board games; import of over 800,000 titles from Germany in 2 weeks; largest selection of German language books for children and teenagers in the US; wide range of school books, teaching material and dictionaries; Audio books for adults and children; extensive software catalog; textbooks for economics, law, medicine, computing and engineering; the latest in German DVDs
http://www.bookwurm.net

Varsity Group Inc
Operates an online store which sell college textbooks. (Nasdaq: VSTY).
http://www.varsitybooks.com/

Virtual Hospital
A digital health sciences library at the University of Iowa for health care providers and patients.
http://www.vh.org

Textbookx.com
Textbooks and general book store.
http://www.textbookx.com/

Oswego State University
Oswego's three schools - the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business and School of Education - offer 95+ undergraduate and graduate programs. The 700 acre campus located 35 miles of Syracuse hoats 8,000 students.
http://www.oswego.edu