A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story

Abstract: Many college students and their families are concerned about the high costs of textbooks. Ebooks have been proposed as one potential solution, open-source textbooks have also been explored. A company called Flat World Knowledge produces and gives away open-source textbooks in a way they believe to be financially sustainable. This article reports an initial study of the financial sustainability of the Flat World Knowledge open-source textbook model.