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An obvious issue with college textbooks is that they are expensive. Averaging over $100 per book, they are hard to afford and as a result, students sometimes opt to simply not buy the books at all. This leads to unsatisfactory perforamance from students and to frustrated professors. Because the books are not being bought, authors are also jipped and recieve little to no profit for their work. Bottom line: the system is not working, and people are not happy.
Authors gain 15% of profits from the sales of their books. The first semester their book is used students buy new books, but from that point forward the number of new books purchased goes down until around the fourth semester, when the author is earning almost no money. This pressures the authors to put out new editions, and this is the point at which prices go back up for the majority of students.
Flat World is a publishing company that has proposed the idea to publish, for free, textbooks online. No accounts or passwords will be necessary -- the books will be available at a URL to everybody. Teachers will be able to mix different parts of the textbooks to virtually create their own books for their own courses. The company would also supply flashcards and other study guides. The paper versions of these products would be sold more cheaply than college textbooks are already.
Flat World's goals are admirable, and they might actually work, but there are barriers standing in the way. Authors in the teaching world are like brands in other markets -- teachers tend to select books written by more well-known authors. Therefore the key to gaining clients lies in persuading popular authors to sign with them. One of the ways they are trying to do this is by convincing them that they would earn more money this way. They would gross 20% of sales as opposed to the 15% they do now, and they would also receive revenue from the remixed textbooks created by professors and teachers. In order to make their system more appealing, Flat World is also releasing a series of textbooks in the format of comic books.
There are many positive aspects to Flat World's system of publishing. It would lower prices for students, increase revenue for authors, and market a way for teachers to create their own textbooks for the courses they teach. Now all they have to do is get authors to take the bait.
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This is a really good idea from a students prospective as well as a professors. Students save the money (and books online would be convenient since students are on their computers most of the time) and the professors have the creativity of designing coursework and readings easily. The problem with this, as you mentioned, is the fact that authors have to cooperate and join Flat World. I see this as a complete flop. The authors that are known and have excellent books, know that there would be no way to earn profits from switching to an online format, because they make so much money through school texts. How can they(Flat World) guaranty that there texts are being regulated? They could become manipulated by computer pirates, for all the wrong reasons. I could see how this would be a tough decision for authors, because the promises that Flat World would increase their sales seems unrealistic since they are not making direct profit from the sale, obviously, since the text is free.
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