Going Like Sixty

In the U.S. the buying and selling of textbooks is almost hated as much as a 7:30 a.m. class. Flat World, a company in New York says it is launching a pilot project to give away texts on 15 campuses. They have a goal of demolishing the $5.5 billion text publishing industry. Nobody involved in the class book project is happy, authors, faculty or students. All the books have been peer reviewed and promise to deliver high quality. A former exec with the largest text publisher says “why not try something different?”

It’s the distribution method — via the Internet — that is a radical change. Video and audio clips are embedded in most texts, often adding timely examples from real-life practitioners. Plus, the texts are produced on an open-source platform, meaning they can be updated easily and professors can customize each textbook to match a particular lesson plan. Those are major advantages over paper editions, says Dana Lanham, an advertising professor at University of North Carolina in Charlotte. “Being online lets the content be so dynamic,” says Lanham, who will teach some 70 students using Flat World texts this fall. “Usually textbooks are out of date as soon as you print them.” (time)

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