Free Textbooks
August 8, 2008
Companies are changing the way textbooks are published.
Check out CourseSmart LLC http://www.coursesmart.com/. A new venture founded and supported by six higher education textbook publishers. Their mission is to improve teaching and learning by providing instructors and students better exposure and access to digital course materials.
Here is an interview with the founders of, Flat World Knowledge, another company that plans to make textbooks available for free or for a small fee if you want a printed copy.
“According to the National Association of College Stores in a 2007 survey, the average cost of a new college textbook was $53. The founders of Flat World Knowledge, which launches with its first run of college textbooks this fall, consider that too high — so high, in fact, that they’ll be offering textbooks for free, at least in versions that can be read online.
“If the student wants to buy a printed copy of the textbook, it will be printed on demand by the company and provided in color for one price or black and white for a lesser price. For the student who prefers to listen to the book on an MP3 player, audio versions will be available too. Each format will have its own cost structure, but on average, it’ll tally up to about $30.”
In this interview company executives explain how they expect to make money “following an open source model of publishing and why faculty members from 15 schools — among them, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Houston Baptist University, Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, CO, and Santa Ana College in California — have signed on to add one of the Flat World textbooks to their courses as part of a beta-testing phase.”
(Campus Technology, 6 August 2008)