Students taking Introduction to Business at the University of Toledo used to pay almost $200 for their textbooks. Starting this fall 2010 semester, they can get them for free.

Terribeth Gordon-Moore, assistant dean at UT’s College of Business Administration, decided to adopt a text offered by Flat World Knowledge because of the options the company offers in terms of price and format.

“As long as the quality of the materials that are in the textbooks is there, we’ll move forward,” Gordon-Moore said. “It helps us all around: the delivery, the consistency, the assessment. It allows faculty to stay relevant and current.”

Students can access a free online edition, purchase $29.95 black-and-white paperback books or print out individual chapters for $1.99. Audio books, PDFs, eBooks, self-printable versions and paperback color editions are also available for minimal prices.

With the expensive, finicky college textbook market, Flat World founders Eric Frank and Jeff Shelstad saw the need for a new business model. Frank, president, and Shelstad, CEO, broke from previous employment at Prentice Hall to start their own venture in 2007.

“The current industry is struggling with its business model because it only makes money when a student buys a new book,” Frank said. “By the fourth semester they’re making no money.”

Nationally, students spent an average of $667 on required course materials in the past 12 months, according to National Association of College Stores Inc.’s September report “Student Watch 2010: Student Attitudes and Perceptions.”

Another professor in UT’s business department, Susan Shultz, said many of her students weren’t buying their textbooks if they were having financial difficulties.

“The traditional textbook model of $150 per book is outrageous,” Shultz said.

Business research company Hoover’s lists Flat World’s top competitors as industry superpowers John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill and Pearson. According to Frank, Flat World’s success and staying power is due to the way they’ve been able to control the textbook experience, easily adapting to whatever new format the customer demands. Thirty percent of Flat World’s business comes by word of mouth, Frank said.

“We’re giving faculty control over content and timing. They’re not being told they have to use new editions, and we’re giving students control over format and price,” Frank said. “We’re putting the consumer back in the driver’s seat.”

The company can offer free editions of textbooks online because 65 percent of their website users buy a product, Frank said. The consistent amount of money accumulated each semester has allowed the company’s revenue to approach that of Prentice Hall’s, Frank said.

“We don’t think about ourselves as an online publisher. We think of ourselves as a publisher that offers ourselves as multiple formats at the same time,” Frank said.

Many of Flat World’s textbook authors come from leading traditional textbook companies and are renowned scholars and academic leaders in their discipline, Frank said. Textbooks can be updated easily with peer-reviewed content without forcing students and teachers to purchase a new edition, since books are bought on an individual basis according to a student’s needs.

“We’re going to change the book when we think the world necessitates them to change,” Frank said.

The constant availability of every edition of a Flat World textbook is a feature UT Introduction to Business professor Jackie Flom appreciates, explaining that she’s had problems with traditional textbooks in the past.

“Even if I want to use the old edition, I can’t because they can’t get enough copies of it. I’ve had that happen where I adopted a textbook, and then the edition changed the semester after I adopted it, and I felt bad. What have I done to my students, and what have I done to myself?” Flom said. “We’re paying for this big book, and part of what attracted us to it is now useless.”

Flat World uses a Creative Commons License that allows professors to edit material in the textbook to fit their syllabus. Currently, professors can re-arrange and delete chapters. As of December 2010, professors will be able to edit text on the word level, and add their own documents into the book.

While the term “open-source” seems counterintuitive when paired with “textbook,” Flom said that when it’s applied in the context of an academic community, there is little chance for underhanded intentions.

“It could transcend into a Wikipedia type of thing, but I think most professors are using it more as a tool to enhance the class curriculum than any kind of nefarious reasons,” Flom said.

Shultz and Flom both remarked that they liked being able to combine multiple sources and examples into their textbook through the open source feature that Flat World offers. It allows their course to stay current and saves paper, Flom said.

“We were able to rearrange chapters, and put them in the order that we wanted to present them in and able to drop chapters that we weren’t going to use,” Flom said. “Getting students to read is becoming even more difficult. If it’s too technical they won’t read it. Not having the book is no longer an excuse for not reading.”

In spring 2009, 27 classes and 750 students across the U.S. used Flat World textbooks. By the next semester, approximately 40,000 students were using their books in 480 classes. Flat World currently reaches students at over 800 colleges, including Ohio schools like Kent State University, Ohio University, Miami University and Wright State University.

Tags: textbooks, University of Toledo

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2010 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Community, Education.
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