http://bigbrandoncampus.com Entrepreneurship Across the Collegiate Landscape Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:03:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 http://bigbrandoncampus.com/2010/01/29/will-textbook-rental-be-a-flash-in-the-pan/ http://bigbrandoncampus.com/2010/01/29/will-textbook-rental-be-a-flash-in-the-pan/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:30:06 +0000 admin http://bigbrandoncampus.com/?p=61 What a difference a week makes.  Last week, the buzz was all about the rental textbook market.  How Barnes & Noble’s entry into this sector legitimized it’s business model and how Chegg.com ramped up it’s efforts to capture market share and solidify itself as the leader through a sizable advertising expenditure.  However, on Wednesday, Apple revealed the iPad that promises to breath life back into traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and books, but only in doing so by moving it into the digital space.  So how long will it take for textbooks to be offered through Apple’s App Store?  How long will it take for students to adopt the iPad?  How much longer will the textbook (rental and purchase) market even exist?  Where will Chegg, Follet, Barnes & Noble and the like find themselves in 3, 5, or 10 years?  After all, as digital stragetist Michael Leis states, “the iPad literally takes twenty pounds off the backs of high school and college kids if their textbooks are all available through the app store. And why wouldn’t publishers put their books in the App store? The audience is already there and ready to one-click all the bookstore hassle away.”  Will this textbook rental business model be a flash-in-the-pan?

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