The basic content of intermediate micro – choice theory, theory of the firm, market equilibrium – has not changed for decades. The latest Intermediate micro textbooks cover substantially the same material – indifference curves, budget constraints, cost curves- as do 20 year old texts.
Sure, there are some differences across editions. Take, for example Eaton, Eaton and Allen's intermediate microeconomics textbook. The application “Why Everyone Loves Britney Spears” in the 6th edition was changed to “Why Everyone Loves Christina Aguilera” in the 7th edition (the page number, p. 272, is unchanged).
Or consider Browning and Zupan's Microeconomics. Previous editions focused on the inefficiency of food stamps and the virtues of school vouchers. The latest one (11th edition) has a new discussion of ObamaCare: "We have no expertise in constitutional law, but it is easy to use our consumer choice model to show that a mandate combined with the subsidy can make some recipients worse off than they would be with no subsidy at all."
Publishers produce new editions of undergraduate textbooks every three years for one reason: to kill the second hand market.
The Carleton bookstore is charging $134.50 for a used version of Browning and Zupan (11th edition), $179.25 for a new one. Prices on Amazon are only slightly lower. Prices at this level are only sustainable if there is a relatively small number of used texts available – if there were 10 or 20 years worth of used textbooks on the market, the increased supply would drive down the price of both old and new texts.
Now there are 10 year old copies of Browning's Microeconomics available – a 2001 version sells for $1 plus shipping and handling through abebooks.com. The reason that there is such a huge price disparity between old and new editions – although the books have substantively similar content – is network externalities. Textbooks serve a coordination function; they allow students and professors to be "on the same page", both metaphorically and literally.
Professors generallly assign readings by chapter, for example, "Week 2: chapter 4, consumer theory." But chapter 3 in the current edition might be chapter 2 or chapter 4 in the old edition. Professors often require students to complete end-of-chapter problems, and problem numbering or wording may differ across editions. When a professor says "Study Figure 3.4 carefully, I'll be asking a question about it in the final exam", the student with an older edition of the text, where Figure 3.4 is labelled 2.4, may end up studying the wrong thing.
It's just like software upgrades – an old version of Microsoft Word might do everything the user needs, but if Microsoft introduces a new .docx file format, old versions are rendered useless, because they are unable to read files generated by other users.
The whole process disgusts me. New editions destroy value, by making old editions worth less. They hurt students, who face high prices for texts. Any pedagogical benefit from having a slightly more updated text is more than offset by the increase in the number of students who decide to save money by reading Wikipedia instead of a textbook. Ultimately, it is a collosal waste of resources – all the effort that goes into producing a new edition that differs little from the old one; all of the perfectly good older textbooks that end in the recycling bin.
But what is the alternative? One possibility is banning new editions – or limiting publishers to one every six years.
Alternatively, professors could force publishers to compete on price by giving their students a choice of texts (e.g. Readings – pp. x-y, Varian OR pp. y-z, Eaton OR pp. a-b, Browning). The obstacle this solution faces is that professors like to rely on publishers' add-ons, for example, end-of-chapter questions, and it's impossible to require students to complete end-of-chapter questions if every student has a different textbook. Coordinating with students when every one has a different textbook is difficult.
There are a couple of micro textbooks available free (legally!) on-line, e.g. David Friedman's price theory text, or Rittenberg and Tregarthen's Principles of Micro. Neither of these are ideal for the type of intermediate micro course I teach, but the Rittenberg and Tregarthen model – where the text is provided free, and revenue is generated by the add-ons – seems to me to have considerable promise.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Maybe this has already been covered – I just skimmed the comments – but I think Stephen raised a good point re his macro course. One issue I have with students and texts is that many who do buy the text for one course immediately sell it once the course is over, leaving them with no reference book for subsequent classes that build on the previous ones (the clearest case I see is intermediate micro I and II). We are working on coordination across sections within and between the two courses here at UVic, but it is a difficult process – turnover in teaching assignments, both faculty and grad students – and preferences. I don’t think any of us “like” forcing students to pay the large sums for texts, but it is certainly useful to have one standard reference for notation.
I was worried about that, which is why I asked the undergrad chair to put out a message during the previous term telling people to hold onto their textbooks, because it’d be used in the subsequent term.
But yes, that would be great to have more department-wide coordination.
I sit on the board of directors of a student-funded educational endowment fund. We have funded the development of course notes from time to time (usually hiring an undergrad or graduate student to spend a semester transcribing lecture notes, typesetting in LaTeX, etc.). These were always very enthusiastically funded, as they are generally sold at the cost of printing by the campus print shop (typically around $10-$20), and freely available as .pdfs on the course website. These were usually high quality, and better tailored to the course material than any textbook available. In math at least, texts are frequently very expensive, inpenetrable (written for PhDs), or noncomprehensive.
My point is that textbooks are/should be public goods. The trick is funding them and ensuring that the texts funded are of reasonable quality. That might be less controversial in mathematics than it might be in other disciplines. No one argues with group theory, but there are plenty of ‘heterodox’ views of economics.
Andrew F: “My point is that textbooks are/should be public goods. ”
The standard definition of public goods is non-rival and non-excludable. Textbooks, to the extent that a .pdf can be put on a website and costly downloaded, are non-rival. But – to the extent that those websites can be gated – they are excludable.
Interestingly, Samuelson’s original definition of public goods focussed only on the non-rival part – he called them “collective consumption goods”. Textbooks are an excellent example of a collective consumption good in that sense – where there are potentially massive gains from coordination. I like the idea of student-led initiatives very much.
Terry McGarty’s take on the issue is here: http://terrymcgarty.blogspot.ca/2012/08/textbooks.html.
Terry – the issues you raise about the de-skilling of professorial work (though you don’t call it that) are real and serious ones – I talked about them ages ago in a post on “have universities reached the tipping point?” I personally love powerpoint – I can embed images, photos, videos, go between powerpoint and chalk. But I really worry that we might go to a world where university becomes like high school, where professors lack autonomy, and the intellectual content of courses is determined by textbook publishing companies and bureaucrats.
I still prefer the matte of paper, but what about Kindle? Shouldn’t a $40 manufacturing cost textbook be able to be sold for $50 on Kindle, complete with updates every Semester or Year? If there are cost savings found the money can always be spent on tangential multi-dsciplinary courses or on some Co-op courses where the broke early 20s student gets paid a bit. Given our main industries are petro and finance, and neither or very R+D intensive, public spending would be a way of raising our R+D and creating course content.
Why use a consumer choice model for a technical field if you aren’t interested in researching that field? Should we tell our mechanics what car repairs to make?
Frances wrote: “Excellent idea, and there’s no need for it to be done at the department level. The Ontario government could find a prof who writes well, buy them out teaching for a year, and get them to write a text to be used in all intermediate micro courses across the province. Alternatively, a group of profs could coordinate, each writing a chapter of, say, a Canadian public finance textbook, that could be used for free in all their courses.”
My knowledge of how this works comes from my experience using GPLed (gnu public licence or “free as in speech”) software. It is written by individuals to fill specific needs; it is not centrally planned. There is a great essay on design called “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” which explains the concept. A central university textbook? I bristle at the idea. An open-source/creative commons book that allows the best to be used: awesome.
“The killer is doing pretty graphics – that needs a professional typesetter.”
It needs someone with a good eye. A creative commons licence will allow a student with some design talent to remake some figures and submit them as “patches” on the original book. The lead author can accept them or not in the version “endorsed” by the author.
PS: Gratuitous and unfair quip: you went from over-regulation to central planning. That’s not what I go to WCI for?
PPS: Real comment: I waited a few days to avoid a quick response and make sure I know what wanted to say. There is a magic to “free as is free speech” work. Central planning can screw it up.
References:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/31717/what-do-the-phrases-free-speech-vs.-free-beer-really-mean/
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Microeconomics
No idea if what is here is good or not. It is filed under “half fininished”.
If I may throw in an additional data point that supports Frances’ textbook edition policy, here is a quantum physics textbook (Quantum Physics, authors Reisberg and Resnick, amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Molecules-Solids-Particles/dp/047187373X) I used for a class 2 years ago, and a book which my dad had used for a similar class at a different school back in the late ’80s. The most recent edition of this textbook was published in 1985, when it cost $190 for my dad to buy, but when I went to get it two years ago it was available to me for just $80! I wouldn’t underestimate the role the Internet played in helping to bring down the price of this book, but it feels good knowing that I saved some money because the authors didn’t feel compelled to release a new edition of the book just to replace the various chapter examples and questions with modern day pop culture references…
Sanchit – nice example.