Where is the Netflix for College Textbooks? — from medium.com by Dean Florez
A $14 Billion Dollar Textbook Industry Unscathed by Tech
Excerpt:
Why not look at an ed-tech solution modeled and offered in trade books by Oyster, Scribd, and Entitle’s eBook subscription platforms which provide access to 100,000 books for as long as you keep a subscription, much like Netflix or Hulu. It seems that as long as you are a student at a university you should have similar access to an educational platform that let’s you access all the textbooks you need and refer back to them as you proceed through your education.
Or as an alternative path, textbooks could be offered to students, much like Entitle where you pay a subscription fee and can download a set amount of books a month, but also get to keep them after you cancel your subscription.
Also, see these other postings at the Carpe Diem blog
“Student’s need a Book-of-the-Semester Club.”
Addendum on 2/22/14:
- College Students Are Using Twitter To Protest Ridiculously High Textbook Costs — from businessinsider.com by Peter Jacobs
with Chegg tanking and publishers either splitting companies (MH), going under, or making acquisitions for market share I don’t think that the price of textbooks accurately reflects what is happening to the market. Coursesmart is a good example of a company trying innovative sales tactics (a la netflix “semester” option). It’s still expensive though. I think the likes of Boundless and Open textbooks are more likely to disrupt than a netflix like book renter that would have to cost 50+ a month for a whole semester (not a small fee) and which only can provide limited options. Faculty still value the ability to choose and students value the ability to not spend.
Hello Joseph –
Thanks for the comments and the insights here — great call. I could see that playing out just as you outlined here. If that were to occur, then the publishers would have a completely different competitive situation to deal with; disruption would find its way to their doorstep.
Thanks again,
Daniel
Joseph-
I just saw the item at http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/02/25/boundless-rewrites-the-textbook.aspx. Check it out.
Daniel