Link to March 3 Knowledge@Wharton post, " E-textbooks: the new best-sellers". (via Library Link of the Day)Excerpt: While some students may be using notebooks or their more portable cousins, netbooks, to read textbooks, some experts predict that within the next 10 years, most U.S. college students -- and many high-school and elementary-school students as well -- will probably be reading course materials on an electronic device instead of in a paper book. And that will have a broad impact on students and teachers, not to mention the $9.9 billion textbook-publishing business.
If this is, indeed, the future of textbook publishing, a key question remains unanswered: Is it economically sustainable? Almost every industry -- from travel agencies to newspapers -- that has moved to a digital model has seen its profits decimated and some existing participants bankrupted. Textbook "publishers are aware that their current model is doomed," says Peter S. Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI). Adds WIMI co-director Eric Bradlow: "It's not just that the bound-dead-tree is a dead model. [It’s that publishers] will have less monopoly power." Assuming the cost of production goes down, "market forces suggest prices would come down" as well.
Related articles:
Revised As You Go: Customized, Interactive Textbooks. (2/22/2010)
Ebook Readers Get Less Than Rave Reviews on Campus. (7/17/2009)
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