Apple Media Event, January 19th - Digital Textbooks

[FanIn80]

The New York Times confirms that the event will focus on digital textbooks and that no new hardware will be introduced.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/11/...new-york-city/

This is something I've been waiting for. I get my books online and on the iPad/iPhone through the VitalSource app. It works pretty good, but it'll be interesting to see what changes Apple brings to the whole thing.

[Russic]

If I recall weren't textbooks a big part of the original iPad announcement? I think there was one big textbook company (Mcgraw Hill?) CEO that mentioned the iPad on CNN the night before the announcement and was totally axed from the Apple presentation as a result.

[Russic]

I'm a bit of an education nerd, so that presentation was interesting. I love the the idea that anybody can make a textbook and add interactive elements. $15 for a textbook is pretty damn attractive as well. Somebody on Twitter did an un-scientific poll and came up with an approximation that about 10 textbooks is where you'd break even on cost as a student (10 paper textbooks vs. base model iPad + 10 digital textbooks). Mileage varies of course.

Full story: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apple-ibooks-2/

[HotHotHeat]

With the cost of my Econ textbooks, I think I would have broken even after about 4.

[SuperMatt18]

Crazy to think the amount I could have saved had I had this for my undergrad.

For an undergrad you need 40 courses, say the average course textbooks cost $150.

40*$150.00= $6000

Now:

40*$15.00= $600 + iPad Cost $600 = $1200

$4800 dollars in savings is pretty close to a years tuition in Canada.

[Bill Bumface]

And this is why I didn't buy textbooks...

[Flames0910]

I read another good analysis somewhere (sorry, lost the link!) about why the textbook publishers would agree to a $15 deal.

Right now the market for textbooks is based on University courses. i.e. students in accounting 317 buy the accounting textbooks. By lowering the price to 14.99 and adding interactive elements, they might be able to expand the market for textbooks from 30 broke kids in a class to anybody with an interest in the subject.

I know I would buy a few marketing textbooks at $15...

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Flames0910

I read another good analysis somewhere (sorry, lost the link!) about why the textbook publishers would agree to a $15 deal.

Right now the market for textbooks is based on University courses. i.e. students in accounting 317 buy the accounting textbooks. By lowering the price to 14.99 and adding interactive elements, they might be able to expand the market for textbooks from 30 broke kids in a class to anybody with an interest in the subject.

I know I would buy a few marketing textbooks at $15...

I was wondering about this too. It would be interesting to know how much of the $100 goes to paper, ink and shipping.

One thing that makes me wonder that I don't see a lot of people mentioning is that the free textbook samples that are available are about 1 gig in size, and they are only a couple of chapters long. I suppose the idea is that they are a little heavy on the interactive elements and videos for show, and a real book wouldn't have quite that many.