The Dolan Foundation is a publishing company not unlike other publishers, except in two fundamental areas. Just like other publishers, we produce and publish materials for the public. Where we are unique, however, does make for a difference to our consumers. First, we are a non-profit corporation. We are not structured to earn the bulk of our income from sales, in fact most of our publications will be available for free over the internet. And second, we publish our textbooks in the public domain.

When an author writes material he or she intends to make available to the public, that author has the option to pursue exclusive rights for its recreation and distribution. He or she may choose to “copyright” their intellectual property. Copyrights are a government granted monopoly protecting that property, intended to encourage creativity.

Material in the public domain does not belong to anyone because either the copyright has expired or because no copyright had been pursued for that particular work. The
content of that material is freely available to the public. The problem for authors writing material for the public domain is that if their work is free, they cannot easily reap the reward for their labor.

There are several theories behind the high price of textbooks, none of them are very convincing. The most widely accepted argument is that the market for textbooks is too small, and that to turn a worthwhile profit, textbooks have to be sold at a very high price. The other component of textbook cost is the money publishers spend advertising to teachers.

The Dolan Foundation spends no money advertising, which is key to keeping costs down. We are also not structured to profit from student purchases, and instead cover our expenses through charitable donation. The reality of copyrighted textbooks is that the system is protecting enormous profits. We pay for the content to remain free, other publishers pay for the content to be theirs and theirs alone.

We chose an Algebra textbook for two reasons. First, the rules of Algebra have not changed in centuries. We can rely on their being the same from semester to semester, and college to college.

Second, it is a course all college students in the State of California have to complete. It seemed sensible to us to actually publish something people could widely use.

Yes, we plan to continue publishing indefinitely. We will always be working on one project or another. If you have suggestions, ideas, or have questions about our current project please e-mail our Director of Public relations: Michell Guerrero at mguerrero@dolanfoundation.org.

Currently we are working on one textbook and bundled supplements. In the future we plan on sponsoring public lectures and the production of other open source educational software.

The Dolan Foundation publishes college resources for free. That does not mean they are always free to produce, however. Creating academic textbooks, supplements, and software is a cause worthy of consideration, and any contribution, large or small, can have a monumental impact.