Making Textbooks Less Expensive and More Relevant

For students, the relevance is also a huge benefit, in that—when we've conducted focus groups and talked with students about their concerns about existing textbooks and e-books—one of their biggest complaints is they feel like the textbook isn't relevant to what the instructor is teaching in the course. And so they don't see the purpose in spending money on something that's not directly related to what their instructor is saying. This enables them to have a text that is directly related to what they're learning in class. In addition to that, we're offering them something that's lower priced, and we're giving them more accessibility. DynamicBooks can be accessed online, or they can be downloaded, or they can even be accessed via iPhone.

… For authors, we're enabling them to actually be in touch with the community of instructors, who are working with their text, to build a better book. ...

Extra: How will this approach address the high price points for textbooks?
Marshall: We're working with a number of different publishers … [who] are providing the content for the DynamicBooks platform … to keep the price point low. DynamicBooks also enables them to avoid unnecessary revisions. So publishers can spend less money to provide the books because instructors are constantly revising and updating [them].

... We're also giving students flexibility in deciding what they want to pay for. They could buy just the digital DynamicBook, which would give them access online, and they could download it. They could also print it page by page, and they can access it on their iPhone. Or, they have the option of purchasing a printed, bound, black-and-white version if they don't want to spend the money for a full-color, printed, bound text. We're trying to make sure that we're giving students a lot of options. ... Let's say they're using a psychology book, and the instructor says, "OK, I'm going to customize ... this psychology book ... .' Then that instructor gets a unique URL to give to their students, and their students can go right online and buy the digital version. The instructor also gets a unique ISBN so the student ... can purchase that book from the bookstore, or they could purchase that book from any online retailer. They would just plug in the ISBN, and they can purchase it from anywhere. ...