Comments on: Would you buy a slideument?

By: aaron

aaron — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:53:55 +0000

IllegalCharacter: Thanks for the interest. I’m going to think about polishing them up a bit more and then maybe try to publish my slides as an e-book. Definitely giving away some of them as a free trial would be the way to go. If I get it done I’ll announce it on my blog of course.

By: IllegalCharacter

IllegalCharacter — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:56:17 +0000

I’d love to see the book, although as Rob said I’d have to see a few slides before buying it. Maybe give away the first “chapter” for free, and sell the rest?

By: Francisco

Francisco — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:31:07 +0000

Yeah, Tipjoy is definitely not taking off. I have received $2.80 since I created the account, but only $0.20 is paid (and those $0.20 are from myself).

Somebody needs to tell tipjoy that they have to pay people to join, until a critical mass of users is reached.

By: aaron

aaron — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:14:56 +0000

Rob: Tipjoy revenues are pretty low. I have about $3 in tips, of which about $1 is paid. A long way to go to the magical $5 paid up.

Because there’s no suitable textbook for my course, I put a lot of extra details in my slides compared to usual (hence 600 of them). I think they could be read on their own. But I still think most people would prefer a book.

My course is 2nd year undergraduate and we get about 100-120 students per year. It’s a fairly big university (2000 students in first-year micro).

By: Rob Elliott

Rob Elliott — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:01:42 +0000

Interesting post. Whilst in the US some Universities put all their slides up for free public access I can understand your desire to make money (a post on a “tipjoy” update would be great to see how your revenues are developing”).

Re: the internet economics course. I attempted to set up a course with that same name back in 2001 but the powers that be wanted a trade policy course instead.

However, it is a good area and I am sure your 600 slides would make a good book. The question is whether, if I say those 600 slides, I would be able to teach the course or would I still need to buy additional books to make sense of what you have written. Often slides miss out consideable amounts of information that are obvious to you but not to an uniformed reader.

I am interested in this topic but would need to see the slides before commenting further. There are other books out there (but not many). We all know the cost of book writing is too high given the research pressures in Universities.

Quick question - how many students take you course each year and what year is it pitched at. 3rd UG?

Rob

By: proales

proales — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:15:18 +0000

Package it together as a ebook, throw it up on Amazon and if it takes off it, wrap it up into something you can sell on shelves…

Or just let me send you $30 on Paypal for a copy…