Apple to $200 Textbook Market: Game Over

The days of college kids paying $200 for a textbook may be numbered, thanks to Apple’s recently announced initiative for iPad textbooks, with multimedia capabilities, for $14.99. Any professor can design such a text, and Apple will give him a 70% royalty — six to seven times what an author usually receives. (Thanks to Gary North.)

http://www.facebook.com/Michael.Allen.Ellis Michael Ellis

At a time when you can get some of the best education available online for free via sites like Khan Academy and via youtube, etc. What exactly is the advantage of a university? Colleges made sense before the internet. Now they seem like an antiquated anachronism. The only advantage colleges have is the social network you are exposed to, however with sites like facebook, even this advantage has mostly evaporated. There will always be a need for social spaces in the real world but why do they have to cost thousands of dollars and be located in just one locale? Why not have cyber universities that would be sort of like a combination of a cyber cafe and a shared work space. These could be franchised around the country or even around the world and if they wanted to be partially or entirely sponsored by large universities like MIT, Cambridge, Harvard, etc. the that would be great. The age of expensive and wasteful college education is dead. The internet killed it. Rest in peace.
Lou Bjostad

Clicks:

Apple created a revolution in music sales in 1994 when it launched
iTunes, persuading the top five music producers that 99-cent downloads
would work, even though “free” music through Napster, Grokster, and
Kazaa was rampant. Apple was right, and they showed that “the way to
compete with free is to make it easy”. You rarely meet a kid without an
iPod any more.

Bricks:

Apple also created the Apple Stores, among the most profitable stores anywhere.

A far more interesting challenge would be for Apple to extend their
business model to all of higher education, founding Apple University as a
private university system with campuses throughout the world (similar
to the Apple Stores), awarding college credit and degrees at low cost
(even for laboratory courses). With the iPhone and the upcoming iTV as
support networks for this, college could become affordable again.
Lou Bjostad

I own thousands of paper books, but I also use electronic media extensively. It’s actually legal and socially acceptable to have both.
TheEndBeganIn1913

I still like books! Hard copies can’t be tampered with (ok they can but you see my point I hope)! Besides, textbooks are expensive for the same reason tuition is so expensive all the easy credit available to students! I borrowed money one year when I was in college…. I went online and within 30 minutes, Sallie Mae was sending Auburn University a check for $10,000! No collateral, no credit check, no nothing (except a co-signer). I never even talked to anyone!

I’m glad there is competition and bravo to Apple once again! But I still like books! WOW 10 years ago I would have never said that! What happened to me???
konst

Something some people might be forgetting. In the market some companies like Apple take the lead in introducing new products or concepts. Then other companies introduce similar products to meet demands that Apple doesn’t.

After Apple introduced the iPad, other companies introduced similar tablets for lower cost that more features and are more powerful. No doubt they will repeat it with textbooks.
Lou Bjostad

Actually, Matt, the best businesses (which are therefore the best places to work) create internships for people when they are very young, and offer them substantial compensation packages as soon as it is clear that the intern is a good fit for the company. If you meet a business that “weeds out” people with such crude tactics, don’t work there. You have better choices.
Lou Bjostad

One of my favorite bumper stickers reads “Remember when sex was safe and hang gliding was dangerous?” When we are inexperienced, the best opportunities look like the worst disasters. Conversely, when we are inexperienced, what appears comfortable and easy often gets us into the most serious trouble.
It is clearly perverse to encourage young people to go into life-long debt at the earliest age that they can legally make a contract. A private company adopting such a corporate strategy would be indicted. Yet when Sallie Mae does it to teenagers, even their own parents don’t seem to hear the fire alarms.
Doughtyman

So keep your machine for four years of school and then sell it or give to somebody. Gonna bring prices down. And that’s the point.
Mord

“The only reason to buy a textbook is because your university profrssor requires it…”

I was going to reply, but I think the quote speaks for itself.
TheEndBeganIn1913

“If I were an author…”

Good one Tom!
Anonymous

It was the “books are obsolete” comment that I felt needed a rebuttal.
Scott

My daughter is in college and this textbook nonsense is nothing but a racket. Custom textbooks for certain schools – each slightly different to prevent resale. Horrifically overpriced and poorly conceptualized. My best professors never used a textbook. They actually taught the material! (Heaven forbid) And any non-text readings were done in classic books that only cost a few bucks a piece. Education these days is so broken. Maybe this will be one step in the right direction.