Editor:

In Tuesday’s issue Jason Underdown expressed his thoughts on free textbooks via the Internet (“Cheap textbooks are good, but free textbooks are better,” Jan. 18). Here is my response:

I’m sure many will agree with Jason Underdown’s suggestion that textbooks written royalty-free and put on the Internet for students to download or read directly would be a terrific savings in dollars per student.

Besides saving money, would it also cut down on paper? If so, it has a twofold positive objective. Saving paper leads to saving trees and possibly some forests, which would indeed help environmentally. I’m personally more in favor of saving our environment than saving dollars. A point of interest about textbook royalties: As the wife of an author of many texts, the royalties received are 10 percent of the cost of the book-not much compared to the price asked for by the publisher. The money saved by students would come from not having to use a publisher and the retailers in between.

Jean Frances

Film Studies