A particular instance of the general statement that there is no such thing as a free lunch is “There is no such thing as a free textbook.”

This line of thinking was provoked by an article titled “Ads Coming to Textbooks” (thanks to Rohit Malik) which reports that a publisher, Freeload Press, is trying to break into the $6 billion annual US textbook market by offering free PDF downloads of books which have embedded ads.

Ads supported free textbooks make sense only in specific instances and these do not include the particular instance of Indian education. Continue reading →