365个英语简短小故事-219. Books Don’t Grow on Trees

（单词翻译）

A local community college professor decided¹ to fight back. “The price of books for our students is just getting higher and higher and, combined with the rising cost of tuition, it’s killing² these kids,” said Peter Jason, Ph.D. “Remember, students are one of the poorest groups of people in America. Almost half of them have at least one part-time job. In fact, one of my students has three jobs. She is a part-time sales clerk at a clothing store three days a week, then works three evenings a week as a pizza cook, and on weekends she does manicures at a beauty salon³. And she still manages to have a high GPA and go to school full-time⁴.”

Textbook prices are traditionally high. Adding to that problem, many college instructors⁶ change textbooks year after year; they either upgrade to a new edition or switch to an entirely⁷ different textbook. This further hurts students because if an instructor⁵ no longer uses a particular textbook, that book has no resale value.

Dr. Jason decided to make life a little easier and a lot cheaper for his students by writing his own book on public speaking. “Many books have an increased price because of bells and whistles: CD-ROMs, lots of color photographs, and lots of graphics⁸. I talked to my students, and many of them, like me, prefer to keep things simple. So, during a sabbatical a few years ago, I wrote my own textbook. I made sure that it wasn’t long-winded. I called it Successful Public Speaking: How To Be Brief, Concise⁹, and to the Point.

“Compared to most other public speaking primers, mine is half the number of pages, and one-third the price. That is, $30 instead of $90. Plus, it is published in a three-ring binder¹⁰ format¹¹. So, when I wrote a second edition last year, students only had to buy the 35 new pages and delete 35 of the original pages. For only $7.00, they had upgraded to the new edition. I’ve had great feedback from my students about this loose-leaf concept. Maybe the word will get out, and more writers and publishers will try it.”