Further to my post on a posited Amazon Kindle foray into text books, the New York Times has an article on electronic versions of text books and some of the dilemmas that current models present. I mentioned in my post that the individual consumer doesn’t get to select which book is used. The Times points to an interesting side effect to this practice in comparing pharmaceutical sales to publishing:
A final similarity, in the words of R. Preston McAfee, an economics professor at Cal Tech, is that both textbook publishers and drug makers benefit from the problem of “moral hazards” — that is, the doctor who prescribes medication and the professor who requires a textbook don’t have to bear the cost and thus usually don’t think twice about it.
The drivers are right in this market to start seeing some drastic changes and it seems some professors are leading the way be it by foregoing traditional publishing for electronic versions and print-on-demand, and even going so far as presenting courseware as wikis. (Link).
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
