Are Open Source Textbooks Poised for Their Day in the Sun?

by Sam Dean - Aug. 20, 2009Comments (6)

We've covered Flat World Knowledge and its effort to provide low cost, open source textbooks to college students before. In the U.S., textbooks are an $8 billion market, and students often take the brunt of the costs. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has pushed aggressively for a move to open source textbooks to help with the state's budget crisis, but previous attempts to make open source textbooks popular haven't gone far for several reasons, including failure to include appropriate content.

Now, though, there are some signs that Flat World Knowledge's effort is paying off. Wired reports that more than 40,000 college students at more than 400 colleges will use digital, DRM-free textbooks from the company as the school year starts in a matter of days, and that's up from 1,000 in 30 colleges in the Spring.

According to Wired:

"Flat World has a pricing scheme that starts at zero for online access via a browser and $20 for a PDF, which they believe will be the most popular format. Printed versions of their textbooks cost up to $60."

$60 may seem like a steep price for a printed textbook, but that's a maximum price, and many students pay up to $100 for printed textbooks. ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn did an interesting interview with Flat World co-founder Eric Frank late last year. There, he made the point that Flat World's business model, featuring lots of downloads and automation, allows it to charge low prices for open source textbooks, but still reward qualified authors with financial incentives. That seems key to any successful effort to make open source textbooks successful, and hasn't been emphasized in previous business models.

In a post today, Blankenhorn also points out that "Flat World is being followed into the market by a host of competitors, like Chegg and BookRenter." That should help keep this growing market competitive.

Kudos to Flat World Knowledge for showing that an open source textbook model can work--and work in higher education. Colleges and students aren't the only potential beneficiaries from low cost, open source textbooks. As we reported here, California currently spends more than $400 million per year for K-12 classes alone on textbooks from traditional providers. Those costs could fall dramatically with open source textbooks. The key, though, is that the books pass muster with educational administrators, who have blasted the content found in many previous open source textbooks. In the world of open source, and outside it, you have to have a quality product.

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by hoopla-pdx on Aug. 20, 2009

This isn't really open source, although Flat Earth likes to use that term. The books can be viewed for free online, but you certainly can't take them, or portions of them, and do what you want with them.

ZDNet does partially point this out if you follow the link here, then the one to their new article on this roll-out.

I suppose this offers some cheaper options to some students, but also creates a multi-tiered social structure between the students who can afford printed copies (almost as expensive as buying a new textbook), those who have high-end e-books (currently just the Kindle 2) and those who are just reading the free version in their room at night.

It also preserves the collective scam where professors continue to require each others over-priced textbooks, in the latest edition, when lower priced alternatives are often as good or better.

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by eric frank on Aug. 20, 2009

To hoopla-pdx. Point of clarification (note - I'm one of co-founders of Flat World). Our books are open-source. They are published under a creative commons cc-by-nc license, so that users have the right to reuse, revise, etc. Also, while missed in the Wired article, one can buy a black-and-white softcover version for $29.95, which is about 1/5 of what a book costs from the major publishers. There is FAR less of a divide when there is a free version online, a $30 version in print than there is when a class uses a book that is $150. That is a real divide - between those who have money, and those who don't.

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by James DSouza on Aug. 21, 2009

How do the writers benefit? If I would like to author a book (assuming people will want to read it, of course!), how much will I stand to make? Publishing companies offer a lot of visibility in addition to distribution, but writers get fixed fees most of the time, with little 'upside'.

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by an anonymous user on Oct. 01, 2009

Eric, Flat world knowledge is not truly open source. Its just a traditional publishing company giving a online book away for free and offering Print on demand and pdf downloads for a price slightly less than traditional publishers.

Thats not open source.

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by hoopla-pdx on Oct. 09, 2009

I'm just coming back to this now. If I understand Eric and the CC licenses, then, it would mean one student in a class could buy the PDF, or copy all the content from the website, and then distribute it to other students, as long as he isn't charging money for it.

If that is the case, then I take back what I said about this not being Open Source. Is that just not done enough to undermine the business model, or is that not really allowed?

It also seems to me, from this license that a professor could grab the chapters he wants to cover and put them together into a new PDF or doc for their class.

My uncertainty about the 'Open Source' nature of this aside, once Eric mentioned the $30 black-and-white printed version, it does sound pretty good, and my concern about a divide between those who could bring them to class and those who couldn't isn't an issue any more.

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by an anonymous user on Jun. 09, 2010

have you ever tried out eCampus.com for buying, renting, and selling books? I tried chegg and was having problems so I thought I would try something else out. a friend told me about them and I loved it! the prices are already cheaper and plus she gave me her code EE15007 and it saved me 5% on top of that. you should try it out!!

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