More on Open TextBooks
I previously wrote about Flat World Knowledge, a startup dealing with Academic Textbooks, so I was pleased to read in the NYTimes about a professor who has used the service (and Lulu) to self-publish his Economic textbook.
The novelty of this model will, of course, fade over time, but it does look likely that textbook publishing will become disintermediated, changing control of textbooks away from the traditional publishers.
This is great for students, and surely an amazing opportunity for 'ebooks' publishers? Textbooks are the ripest format for publishing as searchable, electronic texts; I doubt anyone reads them from cover to cover as a narrative form, instead looking up single chapters or paragraphs.
