Are Free Textbooks Worth the Price

Freeload Press, a Minnesota startup, has begun offering free college textbooks and study aids. The web-based company offers 20 titles on topics from Accounting to Psychology. Students can read the books online free of charge. All they have to do is register online and...suffer through some ads.

Freeload Press takes a page from the book of just about every web-based business--offering ad-supported content free to users. Freeload's content is not volumous at this point (20 titles), and their customers are not legion (fewer than 40). But, the company's website promises that they are adding titles as soon as they can.

Freeload Press has taken a beating from critics thus far. Basically, folks (academics and traditional book publishers) doubt the model will--or even should--work. The argument is two-fold: (1) No advertiser should be able to hold students' minds captive while they are in an impressionable learning state and (2) Textbook authors will not give up lucrative arrangements with traditional publishers for an iffy deal to give away their work in exchange for a percentage of ad sales.

Freeload Press is, of course, ignoring the critics and pressing on. They are also hedging their bets, offering print versions the textbooks for $35-$40, plus shipping. The print versions also contain ads.

When I first heard about this idea, I thought it was a great one. Then, I tried the service and found that it's too early to tell. Most of the books I need for my classes are, as predicted, not available. And, after taking a look at the lists of required textbooks for several colleges, I found that many of those books were not available either. I also noted that many of the textbooks required for most classes were written by the professors teaching the classes. It seems that Freeload Press should be going after professors to offer versions of their books via this service.

Freeload Press certainly cannot ask traditional textbook publishers such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill. These companies publish a large chunk of the books used in most colleges and high schools, hundreds of titles between them. Both Pearson and McGraw Hill offer electronic textbooks for online reading as part of a subscription service. The electronic books are not available for download or print, but they are availabe for half the price of the print version.

Here's a quick guide to free and low-cost textbooks online:
SafariX (Pearson & O'Reilly) -Thousands of titles. Purchase a subscription for up to $80. The subscription buys you 150 days of online viewing of a single book. If you need to use multiple books, you'll have to buy multiple subscriptions.

Primus Online Bookstore (McGraw-Hill) -Books on Business, Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences and Engineering available half-price for online viewing or for download.

Textbookrevolution.org -Student and volunteer-run, About 300 titles available free from their authors or copyright holders. Books can be downloaded or viewed online free of charge.