Why Create a PoD Textbook
This page is in progress.
There’s a need. More faculty than students…
We want to create easy access to print-on-demand open textbooks. Currently, students and faculty can order PoD books from SFU DocSol or other services for some books (e.g. Amazon for OpenStax). However, these suppliers cannot always provide a printed copy as quickly and cheaply as some students or faculty would like. One solution is to encourage/educate college and university bookstores to take on this role. The advantages include:
Familiarity and value.
- Physical, printed open textbooks displayed or offered in a bookstore, provides greater visibility for these resources.
- Placing printed open textbooks along side hard copies of traditional textbooks in a bookstore, normalizes them; makes them familiar; helps students and faculty become more comfortable with them.
- Having a printed open textbook along side a traditional textbook allows students to more easily do a price comparison, and see the value of OTB.
- Making printed open textbooks more available will likely increase their usage.
