The video at the bottom was produced by Rethink Books. There's a lot of interesting information at the start of the video and they offer their idea about the future of book reading towards the end. Are they right? I don't know. But about 40 seconds in, this got my attention:
The US Book Publishing market is $40.3 Billion
Less than 5% is digital
Meaning 95% is up for grabs.
It got me thinking. What are these numbers for textbooks? According to this article in the NY Times:
According to the National Association of College Stores, digital books make up just under 3 percent of textbook sales, although the association expects that share to grow to 10 percent to 15 percent by 2012 as more titles are made available as e-books.
OK. That's all books. What about textbooks?
From Publishers.org:
Elementary and High School (K-12): $5.2 billion in 2009.
Higher Education category: $4.3 billion in 2009.
Putting a book in a digital format is just a baby step towards rethinking the idea of what publishers deliver. When there is a platform to deliver the content of a textbook in a lesson/unit/curriculum format, the value of the content goes up. This is our sweet spot. SchoolTown makes it easy for a publisher to deliver their content in an readily useful form.
