Botany and microbiology professor Mariëlle Hoefnagels isn’t raking in money from the biology textbook she wrote. She is putting the royalties instead into a textbook scholarship fund for next year.
“I really don’t want to make money off my students,” said Hoefnagels, who wrote “Biology” as a sequel to the “Life” textbook she coauthored with her husband, University College Dean Doug Gaffin, and two others.
The textbook is used by her Biology 1005 class and was chosen by the textbook committee for the Zoology 1114 class.
“She understood that using her book on campus might be a conflict of interest,” Gaffin said. “Further, she knew how important books were to her as a student so she felt a book scholarship could make a big difference in students’ lives.”
The details about the scholarship’s criteria are still being decided, but the money will be used to help students pay for their textbooks.
Hoefnagels said a trend toward e-books in the textbook industry would significantly lower book costs for students.
Her “Biology” book includes a code to download a free e-book was included. She said her publishers did this to see which option students would use when given an equal choice between the two.
Hoefnagels said publishers want people to begin using e-books and that the e-books will be much cheaper than printed textbooks.
“Publishers don’t make any money on a used book,” Hoefnagels said. “The only time they make any money on it is the first time it gets sold to a bookstore. After that, the book might get sold six or seven more times, but the bookstore is the only one getting any money on it.”
Hoefnagels said if people use e-books, publishers could spread their investments over more students and books so each book would cost less. Currently, investors recover the entire investment during the first year before the market is flooded with used copies of the book.
Some said this is a good idea because of the interactive features included in an e-book, like videos, audio clips and hypertext.
University College freshman Brandy Siegmund said it would be convenient for her to buy e-books for her classes.
“It’d be so much easier if all I needed for class was my laptop or to print a page or two,” she said.
Hoefnagels said any new book she is commissioned to write will be solely an e-book.
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SoonerTexan88 3 years, 6 months ago
Go Dr. Hoefnagels! One of the best professors at OU!