Zed Shaw has made the book available for free. It's perfectly acceptable to point that out (indeed, it's linked from the udemy summary anyway). If you need more than the book, you can pay for the course. This is why it is labelled a "companion". There is nothing morally bankrupt about using the resource that has been graciously given away for free: it seems evident that Zed Shaw intended the book to be free, so use that fact. If you need more, he believes it's worth $29 of your money to access the additional materials.
There's a really good argument to be made if the OP were linking to a bootlegged free version of a book that costs money, but it's really silly to criticize him for pointing out the free version of the free book on the thread about its companion course.
If the video course were free, what would you be willing to pay for additional course materials? (i.e. the book, exercise solutions, exclusive live sessions, etc.)
I'm not trying to be confrontational here. Online education/coursework/learning needs a pricing structure that makes sense. One that enables thousands of qualified instructors to participate without going broke in the process.
I think I understand Zed's "freemium" model in that context. But I disagree with his approach.
Our local high school district pays some teachers over a $100,000 a year. That's 3,448 students at $29 each -- per year. That's roughly equivalent to the entire student population!
Well, the course is just cheap now because it's in-progress. This lets me get it out for immediate feedback, find bugs, and test that it works with students. In the near future the price will change, but the HTML version will most likely still stay up because answering student questions in comments makes the book so much better.
Generally, a teacher making $100,000 teaches about 125. That's $800.00 per student per year (aprox. $5.00 per student per day). Teaching 30,000 requires a completely different infrastructure. @ $29.00 each, that's $870,000 per year -- roughly 6 teachers plus support staff.
5,000 students per instructor.
My point in all of this is that free is not free and that those who are willing to build courses and content at this scale need to be compensated somehow for their time.
Being able to make a living will draw more people. More instructors, more classes, more choices, better classes, better content, etc.
This is important point that seems to be missing from the online education discussion.
"Generally, a teacher making $100,000 teaches about 125."
Only if you count all the classes they teach every day. However, kids don't come to school for just one class a day. Each teacher gets 15 to 30 kids 8 times a day for 1/8th of the day (assuming 8 classes a day). Not that that's really the important point here...
"My point in all of this is that free is not free and that those who are willing to build courses and content at this scale need to be compensated somehow for their time."
He is getting compensated though. At $29.00 a pop. The fact that he puts free material out there will almost definitely raise his compensation, not lower it.
"More instructors, more classes"
You don't necessarily need or want this. If one teacher can teach xx,000 people in a given subject, the teaching market will start to resemble a more 'winner take most' market, allowing those who aren't as good at teaching to find use elsewhere.
It will also allow everyone to learn from the best instead of only 125 people who happen to be in the right school district.
Disruption happens when someone demonstrates that the existing system is flawed by creating a better system. It will cost what it costs. You sound like a traditional publisher complaining that they can't charge $20 for schlock and abuse authors anymore.
It amazes me that people invest 20 hours in reading a book and complain about the price. If we assume roughly $40/hr for a $80k programmer, this is about $800 worth of time you're investing. Does a "hard" investment of $29 (4%) really make that big of a difference?
I always use “let's assume roughly X/hour” as a joke.
You don't get paid for your spare time, except in opportunity cost. If someone applies 20 hours of their time at work, then yes, that's pocket change. If they apply 20 hours of their time at home, that's not time that they'd get paid for anyway, so the analogy is as foolish as the claim that every pirated copy of a movie would have been bought were it not for pirates.
Instead, I'm choosing between 20 hours of reading a book and maybe 20 hours of watching television (for example), which costs the electricity that the television consumes (since the cable or internet is paid for already). I suspect you'll find 20 hours of TV will cost less than $29. Or maybe it's 20 hours of running over the course of a couple of weeks. That's free, except maybe for the cost of the water to rehydrate. That's probably cheaper than $29, too. If you want to do the analysis in terms of how much it will earn you in the future, that's also valid I guess. But it complicates things, since it's hard to quantify how much the relaxation you get from watching TV or destressing from running is worth.
Let me just say, I don't think people should complain about the price of a good book when it's <$50-100 (depending on material). But the X/hour analogy only works if you're taking work time, and then many companies will often be willing to refund you that money anyway.
Last note: this isn't $29 for a book. It's $29 for a video course (though admittedly a non-HTML version of the book is thrown in at the end). The book itself is available for free, which is all that the OP was pointing out.
>You don't get paid for your spare time, except in opportunity cost.
Your free time is clearly worth more than your wage/salary. If your free time were worth nothing, it would make no sense to have it. You have extra time you could get another job possibly paying up to your existing rate.
Don't like the thought of taking a second job doing what you're doing now? That's because your time is worth more to you than that cash, by definition.
True, but by working for "roughly X/hour" you've established that the typical exchange rate for your time is roughly X/hour. If I were to ask you to do some work for my during your off time, I would have to pay about X ± X/2 depending on how you guarded your time. So what if someone only values their time at X/4? That's still $200 worth of spare time.
That's fair, if we're continuing a monetary analogy (which I did do).
My spare time is worth happiness/distraction to me. Not money. I will confess that in that particular regard, I may differ from some, or perhaps even most, others.
Doesn't make much sense anyway. So you make $40/hr, 40 hours a week. Well there is 168 hours in a week, subtract 40 from that and you have 128 hours those 40 hours must pay for.
As if that wasn't enough you have a lot of expenses that are flat-rate that you must pay regardless of how you spend your time (such as your rent).
All this is further assuming that your goal is to spend everything you make every month. Most probably put away some money to be able to buy a new car, travel etc. (or even just to be able to repair the car when it breaks)
by working for "roughly X/hour" you've established that the typical exchange rate for your time is roughly X/hour
Well, I've established that I'm willing to work that many hours for that rate. That doesn't mean I'm willing to work more hours at the same hourly rate. Most people I know value their spare time enough to expect a higher rate for working more time.
Maybe it's more about the absolute value of something than its relative value. These days, 29$ is a lot for me. That is not a statement that the book is too expensive or that I don't give it the value it deserves.
For what it's worth I plan to read the online beta then print out a bought PDF for easier reading.
Books, videos and course materials don't just happen because we say so. Real people create this stuff.