Textbook publisher Pearson is going digital. Here’s why that’s a bad move.

In July, textbook publisher Pearson announced its “digital first” strategy for publishing new materials. As a result, alll 1,500 US textbooks will transition to digital, and it’s unclear how often print materials will be published and revised. In some ways, this is a sensible move. Textbook authors can update materials as and when required, and the process for doing so will become much simpler and less costly. Fair enough. Dig a little deeper, however, and the motivation for the transition seems somewhat sinister. In 2016, Pearson decided to cut an astounding ten percent of its staff by 2019 due to a loss of £2.6 billion. What caused the reduction in revenue? Students buying second-hand textbooks, apparently. To add insult to injury,  more than US$10 billion is spent each year at American university bookstores, an unfathomable amount that earns the average bookstore a profit of 21 percent. “We want students to have the best and most up-to-date content for the best price,” Pearson CEO John Fallon told Inside Higher Ed.