Bookshelves to digital screens: World’s largest education publisher triggers tech transition

“Now, turn to page 33 in your textbooks and start reading the first passage. Since the notable education publisher Pearson announced its hard-hitting news of phasing out print books, it seems like classic teacher mottos like the above will soon phase out too. Pressured by the growing popularity of e-textbooks, Pearson revealed that students would only be able to rent traditional textbooks from now on. Reaching a “digital tipping point”, the world’s largest education publisher found that their annual revenues come from digital sales. So Pearson decided that it was time to flick the switch and tune into the digital demand. From a financial perspective, while losing its grip on physical textbook production, the company may be cruising toward an increased profit margin. As outlined by Forbes, “Textbooks are an interesting quandary in the publishing world. The cost of creating the original content for the textbook is a comparatively small percentage of the overall costs. “But for a textbook, those other costs – securing the rights for images or commissioning them outright, editing the content, indexing, prepress, printing, promoting and distributing can mean that most textbooks can cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to make, and some can end up costing more than a million dollars.���