Interview
Textbook Publishing in a Flat World
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 08/06/08
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, Co-founder and CMO Eric Frank explains how he and Co-founder and CEO Jeff Shelstad 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.
Dian Schaffhauser: What do the economics of the Flat World textbook look like?
Eric Frank
: There are two major factors that play in our economics. We build our model on the average student spending $35. That means some will spend zero; some will spend $50 or $60. Most of that revenue is renewable. Certainly, some [books] will come back into a used book market, but they are a far lower volume than a traditional market because there isn't sufficient margin on those used books for the big players to aggressively jump into the game.