The History of TextbookBias.com
Every web site has a story. The story behind TextBookBias.com is a very short one.
In January 2009, I saw a very short blog post titled text book bias which linked to a decidedly uninformative news clip claiming that there is bias in American textbooks.
That textbooks are biased is not news. The news clip only gave a very small number of examples. In response to the blog post, I wrote that, if textbook bias is a concern, then why not make that a subject of web site?
On January 27th, I was dinking around on the Internet, and decided to see who had the site textbookbias.com. To my amazement, the site was a available. Realizing that textbooks are a multibillion dollar industry, I bought the domain name.
I then sat down and wrote this page on the history of the site.
Yes, I wrote the history of the website before actually thinking about what to put in the website.
Change Log
Starting the history before the event is not a bad idea; So, my second act was to create a change log that will record the changes in the site. The change log will serve as the basis for an RSS feed.
Business Model
Having suffered through the dotcom bust, I've developed the habit of wanting to set a business model for a website before doing work on the website. If you don't have a business model, then any costs associated with the site will threaten the integrity of the site.
As the textbook market is a billion dollar industry, the model for this site will be to have a page with affiliate links to companies selling or renting textbooks. As the site does not recommend textbooks, this model should not interfere with the message. The ads will go on the page ad.html. The long term hope is that, someday, the site will make enough renveue to be able to employ a minimum wage worker to maintain and monitor the site.