> staple together some pages and make a free text, dammit [...] a quality text takes hundreds of hours of close work by experts
I totally agree that a meaningful text can't be created a la carte by mixing disparate sections written in different styles, and covering concepts differently. The value provided by the author is not just writing the words but choosing the order or presentation, carefully foreshadowing concepts in earlier chapters which will be presented in later chapters, and using spaced repetition in later chapters to review and solidify core ideas from the beginning.
That being said, I think texts can be pretty modular if written with modularity in mind by the same (or a few) authors. For example, I was able to reuse the "intro to high school math" sections from my first book on math and physics in the followup book on linear algebra.
<on topic plug>We at (http://minireference.com) are building an apt-learn command for first-year textbooks. Get in touch if you want to write the Bo bullshit guide to chemistry and/or biology.</plug>
I totally agree that a meaningful text can't be created a la carte by mixing disparate sections written in different styles, and covering concepts differently. The value provided by the author is not just writing the words but choosing the order or presentation, carefully foreshadowing concepts in earlier chapters which will be presented in later chapters, and using spaced repetition in later chapters to review and solidify core ideas from the beginning.
That being said, I think texts can be pretty modular if written with modularity in mind by the same (or a few) authors. For example, I was able to reuse the "intro to high school math" sections from my first book on math and physics in the followup book on linear algebra.
<on topic plug>We at (http://minireference.com) are building an apt-learn command for first-year textbooks. Get in touch if you want to write the Bo bullshit guide to chemistry and/or biology.</plug>