I frequently find advertisements for new and improved calculus textbooks in my mailbox, although when glancing through the inevitable trial copy they send me I invariably never seem to find any of the “new and improved calculus” they promise. (Most of it still looks several hundred years old, in fact.)
Today’s advertisement caught my attention though. The last page has several testimonials in praise of the text, and while most are fairly generic, this one from a reviewer at Furman University stood out among them:
Even though I have never seen this book until recently, my lectures appear to be coming right from this yet-unpublished text. It’s uncanny.
Is this really a good way to pitch a new text? Why not just say:
There’s absolutely nothing in here that you as a professor can learn from! Your students, who already complain you “lecture straight out of the textbook” will now be validated! Even better, although we might be using the same innovative ideas you yourself came up with independently years ago, since we’re the authors, we’re the ones getting the royalties!
Just sayin’.
