If you're in marketing or advertising... kill yourself.

• College textbooks will now feature advertisements.

Color me unsurprised:

Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, Web sites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model hasn't spread to college textbooks — partly for fear that faculty would consider ads undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 per year.

Now, a small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall — mostly for business courses — completely free. Students, or anyone else who fills out a five-minute survey, can download a PDF file of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print.

Sigh... it was only a matter of time.

UPDATE, 8/16: No wonder the press is derided. As of this writing the blatant spelling error in the headline of the above article remains uncorrected. (Never heard of a texbook before. Are they made in Texas?) Now's the time to slap your forehead.