Open Source Textbooks Challenge a Paradigm | Wired Business | Wired.com

"A small, digital book startup thinks it has a solution to the age-old student lament: overpriced textbooks that have little value when the course is over. The answer? Make them open source — and give them away. Flat World Knowledge is the brainchild of two former textbook industry executives who learned from the inside about the wacky economy of textbooks. In a nutshell, there is a huge, inelastic demand for college texts, even though textbook prices are high. Because of this there is a lot of piracy and a robust secondary market for textbooks — but not for long, because they are updated every couple of years, rendering old editions virtually worthless. Flat World’s business plan aims to exploit the inefficiencies: Its books are online and free. Instead of charging for content it aims to make money by wrapping content up in 'convenient' downloadable and print wrappers and selling those, along with study aides and related items. Enhancing the value of the online versions is the open source component. Students can annotate and comment in the digital margins of Flat World’s texts to share their insights, analysis and conclusions with other students. Digital versions of popular print textbooks have been widely available for a while now through distribution sites like CourseSmart, which offers around 4,500 titles and more than one-third of the most popular-selling text book titles. But a study released last week by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) noted that subscription-based digital books are just as unaffordable, considering that a used print book can at least be resold for a while ..."