Rising textbook prices and open-source e-books...

From the Los Angeles Times (Aug 18, 2008), a discussion of the rising cost of textbooks and how some are challenging the market:

"Caltech economics professor R. Preston McAfee finds it annoying that students and faculty haven't looked harder for alternatives to the exorbitant prices. McAfee wrote a well-regarded open-source economics textbook and gave it away -- online. But although the text, released in 2007, has been adopted at several prestigious colleges, including Harvard and Claremont-McKenna, it has yet to make a dent in the wider textbook market."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-textbook18-2008aug18,0,4712858.story?page=1