I've put up a new post at Kairosnews, A Model for Open Textbook Sustainability. I plan for this to be the first of a series of posts on this topic based on what we are doing with Writing Spaces. Partially to share the WS production model and the reasons for it, which seems fairly unique among OER projects. And in part to think through ideas for an article I'm working on. I really believe that the OER movement has put even more effort into how to make "open textbook adoption and publishing . . . a common element of an academic and teaching life." To do this means going beyond the ideal of everyone creating and sharing resources that has been instrumental in promoting OER to date to the practical considerations of how to achieve it. There is some good work going on with this, but it needs go further.

Last week, I posted to Kairosnews about Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, a new open access writing textbook. This has been a long time coming. Pavel Zemliansky and I have discussed it for a few years now. Technology and other opportunities have finally made such a project possible.

And maybe now the time is right. Textbooks are a hidden cost that impact how much students can pay for tuition. It's doubtful that the current economic crisis will end anytime soon. If higher education could reduce textbook outlays by students, some of that money could be as a savings for the student to reduce the overall cost of education, and some of it in tuition increase. It's a matter of economics. Is the commercial textbook industry the most economical method of providing textbooks for students? Doesn't seem like it to me.