Well, the press is giving you a copy for $5 because you probably can’t afford a whole lot of books and because if you adopt it for a course, students will buy it. So examination copies are a type of “loss leader.”
Libraries, though, make the book available to everyone. That’s why they pay institutional prices for journals, and acquire film with public performance rights and not in home editions.
There’s a university press in South America that sends me books for free — their idea is, I or someone might review them and thus make them more famous, and/or I will put them in the library, thereby making their authors and their press more accessible and famous.
But that press is doing this by its own choice. Getting books for the library in the way which has been suggested to me is deceptive and feels unscrupulous. I guess I could say, Michigan and Virginia have more money than we do, so to Hell with them, but I wonder whether what is really happening is, we’re squeezing the royalty check of an author who needs the money … and/or making it harder for the press to stay afloat.
So am I identifying with the powerful too much, as opposed to scheme cleverly on behalf of my underfunded school?
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It never even occurred to me that this might be considered unethical. I wonder what that says about my morality.
Well, the press is giving you a copy for $5 because you probably can’t afford a whole lot of books and because if you adopt it for a course, students will buy it. So examination copies are a type of “loss leader.”
Libraries, though, make the book available to everyone. That’s why they pay institutional prices for journals, and acquire film with public performance rights and not in home editions.
There’s a university press in South America that sends me books for free — their idea is, I or someone might review them and thus make them more famous, and/or I will put them in the library, thereby making their authors and their press more accessible and famous.
But that press is doing this by its own choice. Getting books for the library in the way which has been suggested to me is deceptive and feels unscrupulous. I guess I could say, Michigan and Virginia have more money than we do, so to Hell with them, but I wonder whether what is really happening is, we’re squeezing the royalty check of an author who needs the money … and/or making it harder for the press to stay afloat.
So am I identifying with the powerful too much, as opposed to scheme cleverly on behalf of my underfunded school?
Note Didion’s comment on this: https://profacero.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/an-ethical-question/#comment-33839
The vote seems to be split for now. 🙂