They actually just put up a new accounting series, really good used the ones on Liabilities and Equity and Balanced Scorecard this year as prep for my acca exams. There is also a facebook app with all the books on, http://apps.facebook.com/bookboon Check it out guys…

For example, universities earn a lot of money with the current system — they get a big chunk of initial profits plus used books are huge earners — so they would need to replace that income stream. By raising tuition?

There’s also the possibility of a perverse incentive where textbook writing shifts (statistically) to less experienced grad students as tenured academics care less.

Also, are editors supposed to start working pro bono? Or do we do away with editing? Will that really work in fields like medicine?

Flat World Knowledge gives royalties. That’s substantially different than expecting work for no pay.

I’m mainly worried about another situation developing like we have now with no-pay referees for mathematics journals. (The refs for economics journals get paid, by the way.)

If the expectation is textbooks are free (or at least there’s enough free competition nobody would touch paid stuff) someone on the publishing end still would probably find a way to cash in, but now the professors have something else they are supposed to do for free.