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Publisher of Free Textbooks Says It Will Now Charge For Them, Instead
An anonymous reader writes "In a surprising blow to the movement to create free textbooks online, an upstart company called Flat World Knowledge is dumping its freemium model. The upstart publisher had made its textbooks free online and charged for print versions or related study guides, but company officials now say that isn't bringing in enough money to work long-term."
Once you get kicked out of your moms house, you need a real business model. Free doesn't always work.
We've seen this very scenario many times before, e.g. CDDB, change.org, etc.
In a perfect world, everything is free and we have an endless supply of lollipops. I bet it's not even a real hard realization that you need to make money to continue operating. What gets people pissed is when companies take obscene profits -- the catch is that we all can't agree on what obscene means. For me, that means I don't buy Apple or soda at the movie theater. And I look for my textbooks second hand ( I like the margin notes, anyway )
For over 15 years I've been paying $24/year for a free-for-life email address.
Yes we have. Open (anything) source has a history of being difficult to make a living off of.
Paid access isn't going to work any better at all.
Time to do a siterip.
How or when did they expect FREE (with "optional" charges) to start bringing in enough money to work long-term?
For over 15 years I've been paying $24/year for a free-for-life email address.
eh? who's that with? Seriously you could have your own domain plus email form less
I've never heard of Flatworld before and I'm unlikely to in future I reckon. If Baen had done something like this it would have been a blow.
You know, if Google wants to "do some good", and maybe "buy some karma", they could extend some of those fat stacks - along with, maybe, you know, iTunesU Apple - and buy the best-of-breed textbooks in the classics and STEM - basic physics; calculus; english; trig; algebra; biology; chemistry, organic, and inorganic; and then make the source materials for the book available online for peer reviewed update and analysis.
The collective good done to humanity may be beyond measure.
Seriously. The amount of funds involved are relatively small and the books are right there.
..don't panic
Ninite
I assume you remember the URL for google?
Thanks for the info, will take the snide in stride. =D
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.
ninite.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not charging money doesn't bring in any money.
More at 11.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
were already apparent back in the dot-com days. I guess people never quite learn. Other than that, what we are seeing here is a company doing what is natural; adapting and changing its business model to stay afloat. Move along, nothing to be seen here.
Neither, apparently, did you.
"Free doesn't always work". You say this and this implies that sometimes it does work. Indeed we have several cases of it working very well indeed. That implies that "Free" IS a business case. Indeed, since 90% of all new ventures fail, that a majority of cases of a busniness case fail is no reason to claim it isn't a business model.
Therefore the opener "you need a real business model" is even under your auspices a load of bollocks: FREE IS A BUSINESS MODEL.
That you then have to snide a "Once you get kicked out of your moms house" shows that you're actually immature as well as a dumbass, deciding to go for a rote homily rather than think up something at least vaguely original.
Indeed it was their most profitable business choice.
Whoosh, meet Chrisq.
Chrisq, meet Whoosh.
Free doesn't always work.
Non-free doesn't always work either. I have been involved in many businesses as founder, owner, consultant, adviser, etc. Some based on open source/content, some not. One company I was involved in gave the software away and sold t-shirts. That actually worked fairly well. The trick is to find a revenue model that works before you move out of Mom's basement. Remember that Mom isn't just giving you free rent, you are also getting free meals, electricity, laundry service, etc. Those all add up.
Is this anything like the 'free as in freedom and not as in beer' textbooks? As in, it's okay to copy the textbooks and redistribute them endlessly, just that the first textbook has to be paid for? Or was it originally planned as a 'free as in beer' textbook, until they discovered that their costs don't get covered?
Charge for the errata and addenda.
Hey, Star Fleet Battles (old school shout out) was printed with ring-binder holes for easy re-arrangement when they completed and corrected it, and they once published errata for an addenda.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Maybe you're one of the dimwits who modded the OP up.
Red Hat sell free software. As in you can get it FREE.
Radiohead sold an album FOR NOTHING. FREE.
This business is selling books for FREE.
But all three have revenue.
Red Hat: You can buy the software too. And pay for support.
Radiohead: You can buy the tracks too. And buy special premium content (CDs at the very least).
This business: You can buy the books too. And buy special premium content (Print books at the very least).
If you assume 100% markup, then the bookstore pays $50 for a new book, and sells it for $100. Profit = $50.
You are roughly correct for the gross margins but the net profit is nowhere near $50 in your example. (Rent, utilities, staff salaries, etc) Net profit will be quite a lot lower, probably in single digits to low teens usually if the company is profitable.
Probably with a way to return purchased books to the publisher.
Virtually all new books are sold on consignment. There are a handful of very large distributors in the book industry. They sell to bookstores including Barnes & Noble as well as your school book store. Some bigger sellers like Amazon can go direct but not many others can. New books are sold on consignment with 90 day terms meaning if they don't sell within 90 days they are returned to the publisher. Realistically 90 day terms really means 120 day terms because the distributors have 90 days from the book store and then 30 more days for themselves so the publisher gets paid at best 120 days after shipping a book that there is a good chance will be returned to them unsold. Publishing books is a terrible business to be in from a cash flow standpoint.
Based on your numbers, they'll buy the used book for $30, and sell it for $75-$80 with no way to recoup cost if they aren't purchased (although they probably sell to a wholesaler or something) Profit = $45-$50
There are secondary market options for used books that cannot be sold locally. Not hugely lucrative but they are significantly better than zero. The buyers of used books have some databases which tell them they should pay $30 for Book A and $5 for Book B and shouldn't buy Book C based on what they can sell it for elsewhere. They don't just buy books blindly for a flat fee. (or if they do they are stupid)
Red Hat does not sell software, they sell support. Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much. Because Red Hat makes enough money selling support (and much of the software is created by others anyway), they can afford to give away unsupported software. That does not prove 'free' is a viable business model.
Radiohead made a ton of money selling albums the traditional way. The fact that they can afford to give one away for free is no more proof that 'free' is a viable business model than anyone else donating their time to something is proof that free is a viable business model.
Perhaps their popularity and content quality are the main reason of their crisis, not the business model?
I fully understand the naïvety of my Martin Luther King -ish rant, but damn it, it doesn't hurt to dream.
I have this idea, that maybe, one day, when I start earning money and am done with my debts, I will start a charity (or a kick-starter, as it's called now).
You see, I have this idea, possibly naïve, that I will use the funds to outright buy quality textbook rights, or have them written under a patronage system by noted authors, and release those books to the public for free.
I fully realise the flaws in my plan, buying rights of quality works might be damn near impossible, refusal of noted writers to right under a one-off patronage system, crazy licensing issues, non-acceptability of the books produced by teachers, and that's besides the fact that said charity might barely manage to raise funds to publish more than a couple of books.
But darn it, I will at least try.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Companies like redhat have survived because businesses are willing to pay for support. Other "free content" providers get by on advertising revenue.
But textbooks doesn't seem suited to either. Students are usually at the poorer end of the spectrum and are going to take the free option on textbooks, just like they also didn't pay for redhat. Schools and school boards tend to prefer saving money. University lecturers just set the book they authored as the text book no matter how unrelated or outdated or unedited it is.
Red Hat has their software with zero motivation to make it better documented, more user friendly or more robust. Every time it fails for a commercial user it is a sales opportunity for them. This is a very perverse incentive for a software company.
Admittedly, Red Hat's software product is pretty complicated. But they could certainly do better in the user-friendly category.
Good software with reasonable documentation and few defects doesn't need a support contract. Having the support contracts fund the company nearly insures the software will be buggy and hard to use.
Jeeze people. Physical world: make your thing and sell it. Get your money before the buyer takes possesion of your thing, because otherwise you're just asking for them to make off with it.
Digital world: make your reputation and chash in on it. Get your money before you make your thing, because once it's made there is no barrier to distribution.
I don't know, or care, how hard it is to pull that off with your particular thing, if you try to get around those basic realities your business will probably fail.
However, the exact same net/gross difference applies for the second-hand one. His point was that they do still make more on the new book than the second one.
Not necessarily. First issue is that it depends very much on what price they can buy the used book. That amount varies rather significantly and you really can't just assume it is $30 a book. Given how easy it is to get steeply discounted used books through Amazon etc, odds are a bookstore can buy the book for significantly less than that. Second issue is how much of a discount they have to give to sell a used book instead of a new book. In his made up example the numbers work out in favor of new books but that isn't necessarily going to be the case in the real world. Third issue is opportunity cost. The new book is going to cost more (probably) than a used book so there is an opportunity cost associated with locking that cash up in inventory until it can be sold. Buying used books means the store has to buy fewer new books and their cost of good sold decreases. Since they are operating on relatively thin net margins this can matter quite a lot since it potentially frees up cash for other potentially profitable purposes - presuming of course that they can still sell the used book for sufficient margin in a timely manner.
In short, it's not as simple as the example makes it sound.
Software needs support because it is complex and buggy. Books, not so much.
Really? Many textbooks are used by professors at universities and supported quite heavily. I think that the problem that these guys had was that they tried to follow the old model, where textbook writing subsidizes the university professor's salary. A more realistic model is for a group of professors to band together to write a textbook (or rewrite one that is in the public domain). That can work because professors are paid based on prestige (i.e. the university is effectively subsidizing the textbook rather than the other way around). However, that model doesn't include a publisher, except one that does print-on-demand (as Amazon and university presses do).
I think that the biggest problem is that near-perpetual copyright means that books have to be quite old before they go out of copyright. That means that all the existing public domain books are out of print and out of date. Writing a book from scratch takes time. Once they have the books, it will probably be easier to keep them up to date under an open source model. Unfortunately, it's hard to get started.
Screw the bastards into the ground.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's "mom's house". If you have more than one mom, then it's "moms' house".
Your code has to compile, so should your English.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
okay, it whoosed over me too. Anyone care to explain it?
Actually technically Red Hat _DOES_ sell software. They just provide the source for free, you have to have a support contract to get the pre-compiled binaries from them ( last I checked anyways - I'm a Debian user myself ). Other distros then take the source / patches and compile and distribute for free.
Again that is last I checked. They may have changed since then, and fedora does not count... that is just BETA testing for stuff they may put in RHES ETC.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Whoosh, meet Chrisq. Chrisq, meet Whoosh.
How is this a whoosh? Care to explain this joke, or do you also pay $24/yr for free email?
Snail mail PO boxes run in that region. Snail mail is ostensibly free delivery.
okay, it whoosed over me too. Anyone care to explain it?
Perhaps he is paying $24 / year to his domain registrar, DNS hoster, etc. (It would be a bit expensive, but it makes a good point)
We're now more than capable of spreading around information for free in nearly unlimited quantities with the rise of the Internet. There is no reason for students to be buying new editions of trig textbooks for $150; that's nonsense.
I hope people pirate the shit out of these books.
Your code has to compile, so should your English.
It's a good thing that human beings have brains; that way, they can understand one another even if they make a few errors while communicating and they don't need to be pedantic assholes.
So they DO sell software.
Read a book.
Turn the first page.
Does the fact it doesn't happen instantly stop you reading the book?
No.
The reason why faster updates would be warranted on ebooks is because the ebook can't be easily flicked through like a paper one, where you can glean the gist of what's on the page in 0.2 seconds it takes the page to flick past.
Or, rather, they aren't the only ones who would or could write the documentation.
Do you even know what FOSS means?
So Red Hat would have to pay people not to write documentation on software (software that would be harder for THEM to use too, by the way), or pay people to punish those who do.
And if you want to whine about bad documentation, Microsoft products are made so appalling that a thriving industry (staffed by people who paid MS to learn how to use the software) teaching you how to use their stuff.
Hence there is just as much evidence for Microsoft ensuring their software is NOT "easy to use" because that doesn't make them money.
okay, it whoosed over me too. Anyone care to explain it?
Perhaps he is paying $24 / year to his domain registrar, DNS hoster, etc. (It would be a bit expensive, but it makes a good point)
True, but I'd say that's a LONG a way to have to go to qualify for a woosh.
Radiohead didn't give away any album releases. They sold them online at a price determined by the purchaser. I should know because I bought two of their latest albums to support them (and I'm not even a big fan).
Eyes Open Self-Hypnosis for Victory: Summon the Warrior
Why? Syntax errors in a lot of expensive software hasn't stopped people from buying before :D
giving something for free doesn't make enough money? WOW what an incite....
Radiohead asked people to donate what they thought the album was worth.
Free was entirely on the table.
Radiohead gave their album away. Asking you if you would pay is not making you pay.
" and add genuinely intuitive and useful navigation functionality"
Means that you don't NEED fast refresh you barnstack.
If that wasn;t there, then you may want fast refresh, but it is far far FAR easier to get genuinely useful navigation than a page that refreshes at 20Hz.
You don't seem to understand what even YOU are saying.
But hey, this is slashdot as you so perspecatiously pointed out.
I signed up for an @writeme.com address, which promised to be free-for-life. There are many, many other domains in that stable which also started out 'free-for-life'. That lasted all of about two years, after which they switched to the paid model.
Needless to say I dumped them immediately. Running my own domain and my own email proved to be about the same price, with the added benefit of many other email addresses, a more personalized address ... and a web server.
Case closed.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
" their plans to sell hardcopies for revenue "
That's a business plan.
It didn't work? Well neither do 90% of new ventures, so if a failing business plan means you're in your mom's basement, then all VCs are working from Mom's.
No, it was free for life for a year. Then they changed business model. I only use it as an address, it forwards email to me. Maybe it's expensive, I don't know, it morphed web mail service now but I don't use that part of it. But if I change it I have to change the email address that's trivial to remember and that everyone has known about for a very long time. So I'm paying for the convenience essentially.
(quick check showed that similar services at a similar price, but some free ones out there that seem somewhat fly-by-night)
Really? Many textbooks are used by professors at universities and supported quite heavily.
True, but that support is free and aimed at the professor so that they will choose a particular book. This is part of the reason why textbook costs have managed to spiral out of control: those making the decision about which book to use do not pay the financial cost. It is only in recent years that the costs have got so large that us profs have finally started to notice and will quiz the publishers about the cost. However we often find that the cost differences are so small that it makes little difference which text we go with.
The success of Jonathan Coulton proves that "free" is a viable business model (provided your product does not suck).
The motto is "Don't be evil," not "do no evil," and anyway neither of them implies "do some good."
Public universities have it in their best interests to present their tuition programs as reasonably-priced. In Texas there's a legal requirement for it. They can be an easy solution to this: Have universities fund or actually contribute to textbook creation, then provide them digital-only. Since they're free (already-paid-for) there's no need for DRM and so any PDF/Docbook capable device the student has is acceptable.
For a free book. They need to seek the right commissioner.
There are hundreds of free college textbooks out there on the web -- see my sig for a catalog.
There are basically two models that have been proved to work. (1) Do it yourself. (2) Set up nonprofit online collaborations so people can cooperate on producing high-quality free books.
#1 is actually the most successful model by far. Just do it. Bite the bullet. Write the damn book and put it online for free. Here are some very high quality examples of DIY textbook projects: Hefferon, Linear Algebra, Carroll, Lecture Notes on General Relativity, Petkovsek et al., A=B.
The best example of an organization doing #2 is the Connexions project, which is run by Rice University. Other examples are Curriki and CK-12. These folks all use permissive licenses such as CC-BY, which encourages people to cooperate and view their work as contributing to a commons.
I first heard about Flat World Knowledge in 2008. What was never clear to me was what they were bringing to the table that was worthwhile or interesting. I doubt that they can afford to provide any of the services a traditional publisher would provide, such as professional copyediting or professional illustrations. Flat World Knowledge uses CC-BY-NC licensing, which is not free. That means that their authors know they're not contributing to a commons. At most they may hope to make some insignificant amount of money. What's the point?
Find free books.
And for less than USD24.00 per year you could have your own domain with the ability to update your own DNS records while running your own mail server and web server on your own server in your house. When the domain registrar essentially provides just DNS for your domain(s) you retain control over your data and the content of your website.
I have a personal email address and mailbox hosted by a non-profit ISP which I donate CAD12.00 each year (CAD24.00 if I decide to keep the email on their IMAP server rather than download it to my computer). The personalized head (my_name@isp_domain.tld) of the email address but using their domain name is free; the address is short and easy to remember.
Cool! Generate a customer base with freebies, then change your business model to a paid format after thousands have already opted in! Bait and Switch anyone?