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."

Comments

At some point the college kids need a paycheck...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you get kicked out of your moms house, you need a real business model. Free doesn't always work.

Re:Surprising? I think not...Open Living.

[vlm]

In fact, if the textbook is old, it is worthless

Ahh that's the problem. I took a university class on pre-civil war american history. That could be updated every month as the historical academic journals publish new papers, but almost nothing would be changed each month and approx zero value would be added, although the price for all that churn would be extremely high. Or you could update the text every generation or so, maybe as what boils down to a PHD's dissertation project. Not sure if that would be an Ed PHD or a history PHD project or a collaboration more likely or .... That's probably good enough, and basically free.

On the other hand, I was forced to take some idiotic IT helpdesk support training type class on Excel '97, which was only one generation obsolete at that time. That textbook obviously has to be completely rewritten every time MS wants to re-cash-in on all the previous Excel sales.

Generally speaking if its a training textbook then an old one is worthless, and if its an education textbook then an old one is perfectly fine.