“Textbooks as e-books ought to be seen as a stepping stone to the future,” said Mark Majurey of Taylor & Francis, a textbook publisher in Britain. Published New York Times
The college experience comes with a hefty price tag. Books alone can cost a student between $600-$1000 each and every semester.
Recently Amazon stated that their digital book sales have out sold their paperback book sales. A company that started business selling paperback books from a small office space in Seattle has been a huge part of why the digital book industry has taken off. It’s hard to believe that you can house a whole library in a handheld device. At least no one will miss the extra 10 pounds of paperbacks to lug around.
E-textbooks provide a huge step forward in the education experience, not to mention the lifted weight on your back along with keeping your wallet happy. And let’s face it a smaller price tag is a good thing, especially in these hard economic times.
Back in 2009 An article written by the Washington Post entitled, “Break on Cost of Textbooks Unlikely Before Last Bell” estimated the market for new textbooks at $3.6 billion this year alone. The market research group Simba Information ranks eight major publishers as controlling roughly half of that market last year. One of the companies that has risen to attack this particular problem was chegg.com.
Chegg doesn’t have a digital textbook offering but they have approached it by offering renting. One of the things that makes this company so cool is why they started their operation.
‘We were students so we know textbooks cost too much and students don’t have money to waste. We thought there must be a better way, so we created Chegg to help you save money, save time, and get smarter’.- The Chegg Team
The digital textbook’s can be purchased through any of the marketplaces on hardware devices such as the Kindle, iPad, or Nook. There was a company that was working on developing a hardware and software device that was specific to the textbook. It even opened like a book but they have changed direction to focus purely on software for the iPad.
The company is called Kno and in a techcrunch article the CEO explained what they are trying to accomplish “We are not trying to redefine the textbook,” Kno CEO Osman Rashid tells me, “we are trying to redefine how you learn.”
Not only has the digital textbook market taken off, it has opened the door wide open to really innovative entrepreneurs to design software to advance our learning experience. Kno can do everything a physical textbook can do and more, with over 60 features that make reading, studying, note taking and organization a breeze. One of the 60 cool features is the share feature Share with classmates and study buddies right from within your book.
The cool and positive about the future of digital textbooks is that from the looks of it students will have a smaller price tag every semester, not to mention the new and improved learning experience.
by: Steve Gonzalez
Steve@SteveGonzalez.me