I guess I’m going to have to find a new genetics textbook

Despite my annoyance at the publisher, I have been using Klug's Concepts of Genetics for over two decades. The main difference between editions is that they rearrange the order of the problems at the end to make it easier for students to buy the latest edition. It doesn't work because I retype the problems that I give out so I can tell students that they can buy used editions from the last ten years.

I don't think I can come up with a solution for Pearson anymore. They are diving into the pits of greed.

Textbook publisher Pearson plans to profit from secondhand sales by turning its titles into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), its chief executive has said.

Educational books are often sold more than once, since students sell study resources they no longer require. Publishers have not previously been able to make any money from secondhand sales, but the rise of digital textbooks has created an opportunity for companies to benefit.

NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item by recording it on a decentralised digital register known as a blockchain. Typically these items are images or videos, but the technology allows for just about anything to be sold and owned in this way.

After the release of Pearson’s interim results, CEO Andy Bird explained his plan to sell digital textbooks as NFTs, allowing the publisher to track the ownership of a book even when it changes hands, Bloomberg reported. “In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” he said, explaining that “technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life”.

Nope, that's right. Nope, that's not true. The latest edition of Concepts of Genetics costs $197 and the publishers want to get coins for every resell. Pearson wants to take some of the resell value away from the students because they can recover some of the expense buy them.

I believe I can find online texts that will do the job for free. I wonder what they will think if I tell them not to buy textbooks. They are going to be hurt by that.

Pearson is hurt by other peoples greed. The scientists who wrote the textbook are William Klug, Michael Cummings, Charlotte Spencer, and Michael Palladino. They have done a good job, but now Pearson will cost them royalties because they are grasping selfishness.