Do you think college professors should assign their own books in the classroom?
It’s an interesting publishing question. On the one hand, the book will reflect the subjects the professor knows the best; on the other hand, these assignments will drive book sales for the author.
Reddit blogger Altoid5 sparked more than 1,500 comments and a giant debate with a simple question: “Right now I am taking Geomorphology at a University and today I realized he is one of three authors of the book we use in the class. Did/does anyone have/had the same scenario?”
One reader responded: “I had a professor give us not one, but 3 books written by him (Two of them alone, one with others) for a course. It was absurd. That said, the course was great and the textbook was actually helpful compared to the times when it seems irrelevant to the course. On the flip side, papers were immensely more stressful when you were expected to ‘provide the authors interpretation.'”
One reader responded: “I’m all for teachers making some money on a book, but I think some abuse their power. I had a sociology professor who took a bunch of random articles, threw them into a book, and then added the three exams for the class into the book. This not only required us to buy her $80 book to take the exams, but also required us to rip pages out of it, effectively making it useless to buy/sell used.”
Editor’s Note: This post was updated as the story evolved.