Tired of Textbook cost

Over the span of my college career (now aproaching the decade mark - and no I haven't been in college for the entire time) I have bought many a textbook and sold many a textbook. I've bought books for as much as $200 and for as little as $3. As a computer scientist by trade, I think about the digitization of the entire world book library (proposed and almost implemented by google) and it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I've learned how to go around the bookstore and actually getting a semi-reasonable price for my textbooks. For example, this semester I estimate I'll pay $35-$40 for my textbook that costs $126 at the bookstore. But, that's neither here nor there. A few semesters ago, actually come to think of it it was a few years ago...2004 to be exact, my physics professor decided to write his own book and publish it in a web browser. The book that would have cost about $60-$70 (based on the number of color pictures etc) actually cost $5. His reasoning? He thought that we would perform better as students if we weren't so worried about money. Having never taken physics in my life, I got an A- in the class...there could be something to that.

In preparation for this post, I read a couple of articles that gave some interesting statistics. You can read more about them here or here. The bottom line is that textbook costs have increased by a disproportionate amount and it is even deterring many people from entering college altogether, thus making our entire society suffer.

What, say you, is the solution? I propose this: the cost of a computer is going down at about the same rate the the cost of a textbook is going up. Let's make .pdf files of all the textbooks and charge students per download. Charge $15-$20 per download and that would cover the cost for the author(s). (The royalties going to the author are next to nothing anyway $3-$15 per book). At this price, the students would not need to find pirated copies of textbooks, which happens, and the profits to the actual author would increase because there are less costs of publication and students will go directly to the author instead of trying to buy it from someone in India who has an international version that costs less.

The student would then buy a computer (most do anyway) that can serve them in so many other ways than just a one time class.