Motoko Rich at the New York Times is reporting that textbook publisher Macmillan has launched DynamicBooks, which are textbooks that can be remixed. Note that the textbooks are not licensed openly, but the remix occurs through their system and costs start at $40.00 a textbook (though that is less than the traditional print version). From the article:
“Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want,” said Brian Napack, president of Macmillan. “And we don’t even look at it.”
Advertisement
Mc Millan is doing a fantastic job.
Yes Professors may want some changes, that is good.
But the price should be only $ 10 per person per year. Mc Millan will see that they will sell more with this price . See the difference
$ 40 x 10.000 = $ 400.000
$ 10 x 100.000 = $ 1.000.00
When it is $ 10 people will just take a look and pay $ 10 .
I claim that all pıblishers will close down in 10 years. Mc Millan is smart enough to transfer to digital books. Look up KODAK camera and film industry thet just swicthed to diigital overnight.
I think Macmillan will still make good money, even with a drastically lower price, because students will be buying from them every semester rather than getting a used book.