Stay tuned for the answer Earlier BNET Media link: Flat World Knowledge: A Disruptive Business Model In addition to serving as a BNET Media analyst/blogger, David Weir is a veteran journalist and the author of several books Weir is a co founder and vice president of the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as an editorial board member of The Nation
Publishing Industry Innovators of 2009: Flat World Knowledge and Bookshare . Earlier this month, when Flat World Knowledge, the largest commercial publisher of open source college textbooks, announced that it will supply its books to Bookshare, the largest online accessible library for people with print disabilities, the emerging universe of digital books just became a much better place That's only partly because of the obvious — that Bookshare, which is operated by Benetech, converts books via Braille and Daisy to make them accessible to anyone who is "print disabled"
"They have that deer in the headlights look to them about us." While Flat World Knowledge has emerged as the leader of commercial open source college textbooks, there are various non profit outfits trying to attack the problem of usurious textbook pricing, as well as commercial operations experimenting with inserting ads into digital textbooks as a potential business model. And yes, in case you were wondering, Frank confirms that the company is completely aligned with the underlying premise in Thomas L. Friedman's book, " The World is Flat ." . Thanks to Mark Coker for introducing me to Eric Frank and his company. In addition to serving as a BNET Media analyst/blogger, David Weir is a veteran journalist and the author of several books.
"Every single class is a fiefdom, and they are kings and queens of their domain," Frank jokes. Like any freemium retailer (Frank proudly notes he is on page 160 (PDF) of Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Anderson's "Free" ), Flat World is depending on enough people buying something — "What we're counting on is that people will be willing to pay for different packaging" — because clearly the business cannot be sustained if everyone just opts for free web access. And it will come down to the price points, Frank acknowledges, even when the company develops formats for the Sony e book reader and Amazon Kindle, as they hope to this year. There is as much sense to equipping students with a device that makes all of their reference materials available on demand as their is offering a casual reader a complete portable library — perhaps more. This is a classic chicken and egg scenario in which a device dependent culture needs to evolve alongside new content formats.
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