Parents, educators, students, and tech news junkies are all weighing in on Apple's major announcement today.
In case you missed it (and if you did, you can check out MMi's coverage here), Apple unveiled a new new digital textbook program that is going make learning every bit as affordable, cutting edge and interactive as technology presently allows.
At the heart of Apple's digital textbooks revelation today is the Cupertino tech giant's partnership with the three biggest traditional textbook publishers in the world: Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
McGraw-Hill, in particular, has come into focus following today's announcement. The publisher, which typically sells high school textbooks for upwards of $75 a piece, is on the Apple bandwagon and will now sell many the same books for $14.99 or less in electronic format.
According to McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw, the new digital publishing effort will still be profitable, assuming that the volume of sales is strong.
Normally, McGraw-Hill would sell its books directly to public schools, which would keep the texts for an average of five years. Under Apple’s new textbooks plan, though, McGraw-Hill will try something different: It will sell its books directly to each student (the student could either pay out of pocket, or the school could fund the purchase via a voucher/code), who will use the book for a year, then move on.
McGraw expects over the next five years to "generate the same total sales selling $15 e-books as he would selling $75 books."
Source: All Things D
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