Digital Textbooks the Apple Waythe right way?
I have many thoughts on digital textbooks, and you have all had an opportunity to read them here. \xa0 Apple has made their “big move” and I am both pleased to see digital moving forward, and also a bit concerned about what could become the “only” platform on campuses.
\nI actually presented a paper on the challenges of digital textbook pricing at the Western DSI (Decision Sciences Institute) conference in 2011. \xa0\xa0You can\xa0read the paper here.\xa0\xa0In that paper, I point out that by driving the logistics costs of moving, handling, and returning paper products out of the system, along with other costs such as maintaining a bookstore, one can drive the costs down to about (surprise!) $15.00 while maintaining the 2 year profits of the publisher. And by withdrawing the pressures of the resale market, the profits only go up from there.
\nFirst thoughts that led to that paper were written about here\xa0 and here.
\nMost recently I wrote about \xa0consumer driven markets. Who should make the \xa0choice? Digital textbooks are able separate the content from the medium, and allow flexibility–unless we are locked into a hardware platform. \xa0I also wrote about this in this post.
\nI would welcome other thoughts on those posts and on the paper.