Chegg has long been known as a textbook company, becoming one of the first companies to bring textbook rental online and reach widespread adoption. But with Amazon, Apple and others moving aggressively into the textbook market — and the market and textbooks themselves increasingly going digital — Chegg has been re-positioning. Today, the textbook company is eying EdTech’s Holy Grail of becoming… → Read More
Founded in 2007, Flat World Knowledge was one of the early pioneers in the move to bring free and open access to textbooks to students and educators. The independent publisher offered its learning content for free, giving students the access to texts in print, eBook form, eReaders, audiobooks and downloadable PDFs, etc. Produced by actual authors and reviewed by peers, Flat World allows teachers… → Read More
Since its launch in 2009, Inkling has been on a mission to reinvent publishing for the mobile, digital era by building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for the iPad. Initially focused on higher ed, this year Inkling has been expanding its scope, moving into consumer-facing titles and continuing education, along with making its content available on other platforms, like the… → Read More
SimpleTuition, a company that offers online tools, tips and advice to college students to help them save money on education-related expenses, is announcing this morning that is has acquired ValoreBooks, an online textbook marketplace that offers discounts on rentals as well as new and used textbooks.
Launched in 2006, SimpleTuition has been on a mission to help students reduce the seemingly… → Read More
In 1998, seeing an underserved niche in the textbook market, Jeff Sherwood and his three co-founders launched BIGWORDS. By the beginning of 2000, they had grown from a team of four to a team of 250, had a warehouse in Kentucky, raised close to $80 million in outside funding, made a few commercials featuring Tom Green and even had a $100 million acquisition offer from a young Amazon. Although it… → Read More
Since it first appeared earlier this year, Boston-based educational startup Boundless has been on a mission to ensure that college students have a free alternative to the pricey and bulky world of physical textbooks. The startup believes that an oligopoly of textbook publishers has been driving up costs for years (as the four top publishers currently control the lion’s share of the market) and so… → Read More
Founded in 2009, Kno began its career with ambitious plans to disrupt education with a little mobile hardware — by developing a tablet that was tailor-made for students. Unfortunately, thanks to the meteoric rise of the iPad and, later, Apple’s big re-entry into the textbook arena with iBooks 2, Kno’s hardware efforts didn’t pan out. Beginning early last year, the startup pivoted towards a more… → Read More
Rafter, a new edtech company formed from the rebranding of popular textbook rental service (and Chegg competitor) BookRenter, announced its first-ever strategic acquisition this morning. The lucky acquiree? HubEdu: A young, San Diego-based startup that provides universities with a suite of analytics, tracking and price comparison tools to help them increase their revenue and make course materials… → Read More
A college textbook can cost a staggering $200. Over four years of study, students can easily spend thousands of dollars on books on top of a hefty tuition.
The situation is not much better in public elementary, middle and high schools, where taxpayers pick up the bill. California spends around $100 on every math and science book for its 2 million high school students, for example.
But… → Read More
Last spring I wrote about Nature Publishing Group’s plan for a $49 electronic textbook packed with interactivity and unlimited content updates for life. The original publication date was scheduled for September 1, 2011, but for a variety of reasons the release was pushed back. Today marks the official launch of “Principles of Biology”.
This book is “born digital”, according to Vikram Savkar… → Read More
Apple is making a play for the textbook market with its launch today of iBooks 2 and the new textbooks within that app. It’s Apple, so they are going to reinvent the textbook industry, right?
Well, maybe not today. If you fire up your iPad and update to the latest version of iBooks (Apple’s app for books with its own store separate from iTunes), you can check out all of the new textbooks Apple… → Read More
The days of the $500 college textbook bills are, it seems, over. With Apple’s announcement of iBooks 2, the world of textbooks is changed forever.
Education is a hard nut to crack. There are bright spots and clever new ideas, but technology hasn’t quite figured out how to do a better job than the “old ways.” That’s why Apple’s decision to launch iBooks 2 and the attendant editing tools is so… → Read More
Nature, the folks who brought you the free life sciences learning community Scitable, are today announcing “Principles of Biology”, a college level electronic textbook. Building upon the cross-platform success of Scitable, the new textbook offers a variety of fully interactive features, including quizzes and assessments, an online gradebook for instructors, and more. Perhaps most notable in this… → Read More
Students have another choice when it comes to electronic textbooks. CourseSmart has released an iPad App, and the company says that 90 percent of the “core textbooks” out there are available. → Read More
Michael at TechCrunch posits that the “big Kindle” we heard about is actually aimed at the college textbook market. It definitely makes sense. He writes: Earlier this week Crunchgear broke the news on two new upcoming Kindle models: a smaller form factor Kindle to be released this year ahead of the holidays, and a large screen (probably 8.5×11) to come sometime next year. A couple… → Read More
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