Can a New Startup Profit From Offering Free Textbooks? Flat World Knowledge Co-founder Eric Frank on his new vision of publishing.
Extra: How do you turn an idea like Flat World Knowledge into a viable business?
Frank: … An idea, if executed well, will lead to customer satisfaction, for students and for authors. Execution is everything. We started with three fundamental premises. We need to get great authors to write textbooks. There’s a difference between good and great. We have to convince a faculty member to change to a Flat World book from their current textbook, not out of a utopian idea, but because there’s value. … Then, we ultimately have to get a student who’s in that faculty member’s class … to open their wallet to buy the textbook [in print] that is available online for free. We definitely utilized connections to authors that we have had over the years to get conversations going. We’ve had an increase in people reaching out to us. They said, “We’ve been dissatisfied with the model. What you guys are doing seems to have an economic good and a social good. I’m attracted to that.” We have to sell authors on a new vision of publishing.