The role of pricing in the e-textbook market

Posted by Carlos on 25th November 2011

This is an interesting article from Wired about the state of e-textbooks, its infant state of development, and their extremely high prices.

According to the report, “almost three-quarters of students (73%) say they wouldn’t be able to study without some type of digital technology”. Despite this, the prices do not go along with students’ interests and the available features need to be a lot more than zoom in and zoom out.

Our bet is that, at some point, the combination of open content and self-publishing will end up driving prices down, but in the meantime this is certainly a big obstacle to overcome.