Phft. Other ebook experiences show that publishers will just insist that ebook prices would be around (or probably more) than the same price as the paper textbooks. Publishers know they have a captured market, so to avoid cannibalization (and fears of loosing the grip on their market) they're not going allow those prices to go down. Even a big retailer like amazon isn't going to make much of a difference, since a larger majority of textbook sales are not from amazon.
I'm imagining it will be quicker than that. There are a lot of schools that use licensed, photocopied "readers" along with or even instead of the actual textbooks. Universities could do much better margins by making these types of texts digital and authors/professors would be able to publish and update at much greater frequency.
Publishers would be much better off building a business model now rather than repeating the RIAA's mistakes.
Publishers would be much better off building a business model now rather than repeating the RIAA's mistakes.
But as always, existing players mostly seek to preserve income streams, rather than create new ones, even when an unbiased look will show that the existing ones are doomed.
The only publisher I know, offhand, which isn't falling into this trap is Baen Books, and they don't do textbooks. Yet. :)
Maybe, but if Amazon can help them kill used textbooks then it might become profitable enough to drop the price. I imagine there is a lot of money lost on students turning over their books each semester.
Not in this economy. Seriously, Universities looking to cut corners everywhere are going to look at this.
Plus, it's not like there's a good case for having a dozen different textbooks for teaching linear algebra. Also, if they're digitized, the changes a teacher wants can be made on a course-by-course basis.
It's going to be a slow road.