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by artakulov10 hours ago |
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upvoteby dang4 hours ago|
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Please don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments to HN [1]. You're welcome here, but only if you write in your own voice [2]. The community feels strongly about this.

[1] see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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upvoteby mixermachine10 hours ago|
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Fully agree. I went to school in Germany and many of our textbooks were free there. Sometimes you would get a textbook that is already >= 10 years and out of shape but who cares? Especially the basic knowledge does not change often. Buying all these textbooks new every year feels like a scam to me as they are then only used for one year by the pupil.

Btw when you damaged a book beyond repair, you needed to pay the full price. Only the exercise books needed to be bought freshly as they were "used up" fully after the year. Still, they were often seen as optional.

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upvoteby Fire-Dragon-DoL7 hours ago|
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This has been a shocking discovery for me too. The library near us recently said it's cheaper for them to buy a book then an ebook.

It's absolutely insane.

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upvoteby presbyterian6 hours ago|
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It's significantly cheaper! A physical book can be loaned endlessly, as long as the binding holds up, and even if it gets damaged, it can be repaired. The contracts for ebooks at libraries often limit it to X number of circulations before the library has to pay again (this is how Overdrive/Libby works), or they have to pay per circulation (Hoopla). It's ludicrous.
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upvoteby Fire-Dragon-DoL6 hours ago|
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Yeah that's a shitty model. We desperately need digital ownership rights.
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upvoteby SSLy10 hours ago|
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the other part nobody talks about is hauling that bloody fuckton of paper to between house, its bus stop, the school, and its bus stop either.
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upvoteby Gigachad10 hours ago|
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You could sell them after too. Now the book is the same price but it's a 1 year license. The platform we used was so restricted that it would block access the moment your network connection dropped.
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upvoteby dmd8 hours ago|
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> sits on the shelf for the next kid.

Maybe in a post-Soviet country they did. In my school they shredded them so the next class had to buy a new set.

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upvoteby graemep4 hours ago|
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Why did they do that?
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upvoteby dmd4 hours ago|
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Presumably because the school district got a slice of the money from the publisher.
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upvoteby zigman18 hours ago|
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What? Are you serious?? :o Sorry, this is the saddest sentence I have read in a long time.
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upvoteby dmd8 hours ago|
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Yep. A public school in NY suburbs in the early 1990s.
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upvoteby zigman17 hours ago|
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Well... I am sure someone made good money out of that.

In Slovenia, a post-Yugoslavian country, the school library coordinated a textbook borrowing scheme, where they would own all the material and lend it to students each year. Parents would pay a small "subscription", so each year or two one subject would get new books.

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upvoteby lstodd5 hours ago|
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That's how it worked in USSR in 80s. The school supplied the books and they were the ones that the previous grade used. If they got busted beyond all repair only then they'd be replaced with new.
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