EdBooks Blog
EdBooks CEO Rob Reynolds, a long-time blogger and analyst, enjoys sharing his thoughts about EdBooks products and the future(s) of educational publishing. Scroll through the posts below to see what he's already written, and feel free to email us with future blog topic requests.
How to Build a $19 Textbook
So, what is the lowest possible price we can charge for these high-quality products while ensuring the stability and sustainability of our efforts to make education affordable?
Our answer is that a good textbook should cost less than $20.
At a global scale, it should cost between $10-$15.
This means that, in coming years, students will pay the same price for textbooks that they would for popular fiction titles. read more
An Innovative Solution for Publishing Affordable Content: Stackable Lessons™
Our mission at EdBooks is to innovate educational publishing to create a scalable, sustainable model for generating high-quality, flexible, and highly affordable learning content. As part of that mission, we’ve designed a new content publishing paradigm,...
Affordable Content: This Is Your Time!
[Register for our EdBooks webinar on affordable content Thursday, September 21, at 10:00 AM] The inevitability of open and affordable learning solutions for higher education (and high school) markets can be explained by recounting a bet Warren Buffet made...
Podcast: Learning Content in the Brave New World of Technology
Welcome to Episode 2 of the Got a Minute? weekly podcast. This week, EdBooks CEO Rob Reynolds provides insight into the value of learning content in a world where technology becomes increasingly interactive and driven by artificial intelligence. Pay...
Creating Learning Content Using Software Development Models
One thing that sets EdBooks apart as a 21st century publisher is our approach to content development. We eschew many traditional product publishing practices and, instead, employ something more akin to a software development model. Here are some of the...
Podcast: The Past and Future of Higher Education Learning Materials
Welcome to Episode 1 of the "Got a Minute" weekly podcast. This week, EdBooks CEO Rob Reynolds provides a brief overview of the past and future of higher education learning materials. Here is a series of images that illustrates the...
How to Build a $19 Textbook
So, what is the lowest possible price we can charge for these high-quality products while ensuring the stability and sustainability of our efforts to make education affordable?
Our answer is that a good textbook should cost less than $20.
At a global scale, it should cost between $10-$15.
This means that, in coming years, students will pay the same price for textbooks that they would for popular fiction titles.
The Value of Distribution for 21st Century Educational Publishers
Distribution will be the biggest area of disruption for educational publishing in the 21st century. As the focus of content providers shifts from end products used by instructors and students to intelligent collections leveraged by diverse learning service and...
The Value of Sharing for 21st Century Educational Publishers
As a result of seeking competitive advantage and preserving intellectual property, companies in many industries are reluctant to share information and product ideas. This inclination toward a proprietary mindset has certainly been part of the educational technology...
The Value of Transparency for 21st Century Educational Publishers
Since the advent of digital ancillary content in the 1990’s, educational publishing has employed a series of increasingly complex pricing and product strategies. Pricing practices have included: (1) discounted print + digital bundles (2) custom discounted...
The Value of Abundance for 21st Century Educational Publishers
Through the first decade of the 21st century, traditional educational publishers continued to focus on selling soloed, proprietary content products that focused primarily on the general education curriculum. The major courses in this curriculum, along...
The Value of Content for 21st Century Educational Publishers
This is the second post in a series of articles that explores the characteristics that define next-generation educational publishers. In the first article, I identified five areas in which I believe these publishers differentiate themselves: (1) Content, (2) Abundance, (3) Transparency, (4) Sharing, (5) Distribution. This post focuses on the centrality and value of content for next-generation educational publishers.
The Five Characteristics of 21st Century Educational Publishers
As we set out to build a new kind of publishing company at EdBooks, we contemplated what it means to be a 21st century educational publisher. Is it a focus on digital technologies? Is it related to new kinds of business models? What is the role of learning design? We talked about these and myriad other ideas, but as we worked through our initial product designs and business models, five key characteristics emerged — (1) Content, (2) Abundance, (3) Transparency, (4) Sharing, (5) Distribution.
