મેડાવો.org

This is FYI, for now. Hope this revolutionary concept flourishes. Explore the possibility of getting free text books this year, if possible. See what is available free, this year. Keep an eye on this development. Contact John (Jack) Ivancevich, a professor of organizational behavior and management at the University of Houstonjack@ams-institute.com to show your interest and get more information.

Dami Rambhia

P.S.: For many of you, this is for information.

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http://www.taaonline.net/news/03_29_05.html

Advertising-Supported Textbooks

A number of Fortune 500 companies have expressed interest in sponsoring a revolutionary new concept in textbook publishing: sponsorship and advertisement support of textbook publishing. The concept promises electronic and print textbooks at zero cost to students. wowio, a new project developed by the Applied Management Sciences Institute of Houston (www.ams-institute.com), utilizes a new medium (commercial sponsors and advertisers) who subsidize the production, distribution, and operating costs of texts and supplements. wowio uses proprietary technology that enables highly-targeted student profile and advertisement matching. The integration of the medium and the technology results in free e-books and e-supplements. AMSI has formed a strategic alliance with Freeload Press (www.freeloadpress.com), a traditional publishing firm that provides text and supplement content for wowio. Freeload Press also can produce on-demand print copies. “Our hope is that eventually all textbooks will be free for students,” says John (Jack) Ivancevich, a professor of organizational behavior and management at the University of Houston, who came up with the idea. For more information, contact Ivancevich at jack@ams-institute.com

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-textbooks.artaug16,0,467011.story?coll=hc-headlines-business

Textbooks Free – With Ads

Start-Up Firm Aims To Change Industry

By JUSTIN POPE

Associated Press

August 16 2006

Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won’t pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have ads for companies, including FedEx Kinko’s and Pura Vida coffee.

Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, websites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model has not spread to college textbooks – partly for fear that faculty would consider ads undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 a year.

Now, a small Minnesota start-up is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall – mostly for business courses – completely free. Students, or anyone else who fills out a five-minute survey, can download a PDF file of the book, which they can store on their hard drive and print.

The model faces big obstacles. Freeload does not yet have a stable of known textbook authors, and it lacks the editorial and marketing muscle of the “Big 3″ textbook publishers (Thomson, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill). Its textbooks don’t come with bells and whistles, such as online study guides, that bigger publishers have spent millions developing to lure professors – who assign textbooks and are the industry’s real customers.

St. Paul-based Freeload’s numbers are modest: 25,000 users have registered, and 50,000 books have been downloaded, for courses at schools ranging from community colleges to the University of Michigan. But the company says it is rapidly adding titles and will have 250,000 textbooks and study aids in circulation by next year. It has also signed agreements with three small specialty publishers to make their textbooks available the same way, and is in talks with others.

What Freeload has going for it is its arrival on the scene at a time when textbook publishers are under immense pressure to moderate prices. A recent government study found that prices have risen at twice the rate of inflation since 1986.

A new Connecticut law requires that textbook sellers tell professors what their books will cost students, and other states are considering similar measures.

Cost complaints come not just from students and parents, but also teachers. A 2005 study by the National Association of College Stores Foundation found that 65 percent of students don’t buy all of the required course materials – which means many probably aren’t learning the material, either. Students “are saying, ‘to heck with it, we’ll try to wing it,’” said Jack Ivancevich, a longtime University of Houston professor who helped found Freeload.

Publishers answer criticism by saying textbooks are expensive to produce, and note that they are clobbered by the rapidly expanding secondary market for resales in bookstores and on the Internet. Publishers get nothing from those sales, so they essentially have to recoup their investment in one year’s worth of sales.

The industry also is exploring ways to use technology to cut distribution costs and prices. Thomson is making “ichapters” of textbooks available, similar to the iTunes model for music. But so far, publishers have resisted selling ads.

A Canadian subsidiary of McGraw-Hill briefly rolled out an ad-based model, but dropped the plan last year. Susan Badger, CEO of Thomson Higher Education, said her company tested the idea with focus groups, in biology, but the professors were adamantly opposed.

Tom Doran, Freeload’s CEO, says McGraw-Hill’s experiment failed because it didn’t use the ad revenue to reduce prices enough to get students’ attention. As for faculty, Doran says he realizes not everyone will go for it.

As to objections that textbooks shouldn’t have ads, Doran notes ads already appear in academic journals. He says Freeload’s ads won’t be distracting; they will be placed only at natural breaks in the material, and won’t push products like alcohol or tobacco.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press

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