Friday, August 14, 2009

More News on Textbooks

More to add to the news of CourseSmart's iPhone app with access to 7,000 textbooks and Cengage's plan to rent textbooks to students.

Math is a huge obstacle for many (most) students and an app that will help students learn math is a no-brainer. With the skyrocketing cost of textbooks, an app that will let students comparison shop is also a must have.

I'm interested to see how this impact royalties too. I'll take a look at my Cengage contract and see if there's any wording that would cover this sort of distribution.

iPhone Textbook Apps Just Keep Coming
For algebra students who need extra help, Pearson Higher Education has rolled out its AlgebraPrep app, with tutorials and mini-tests you can take at the student union while waiting for class to begin. The first tutorial, on factoring, will set students back $2.99 at the iTunes store. Pearson promises future modules on quadratic equations, rationals, and several other topics.

Students can even use the iPhone to buy paper textbooks online. Bigwords, a book-shopping Web site, now offers its own app that does price comparisons of particular books from various online sellers. It will calculate shipping costs and discount offers, too.
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It will be interesting to see what royalties the professor-authors of these books realize through these various new distribution channels.

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