Textbooks for iPad progress with Inkling

In a market where most people are trying to save money, I'm not sure getting all your textbooks on an iPad is efficient. With tuition rising in a struggling economy, finding the cheapest textbooks is what most people are looking for. Find textbooks for sale or rent at http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com

In a market where most people are trying to save money, I'm not sure getting all your textbooks on an iPad is efficient. With tuition rising in a struggling economy, finding the cheapest textbooks is what most people are looking for.

I downloaded this and installed on my iPad yesterday when I saw the link on DF. It looks really great and really promising in terms of execution, presentation, and build quality, but one primary issue make it a fatal and even dangerous failure in my estimation.

Namely, that the app is built entirely to preserve the corrupt and scamtastic model that textbook makers currently enjoy with incestuous and anti-student relationships with schools. My understanding is that if you purchase an iBook, you can share it with up to five devices. This is a direct threat to textbook makers who have engineered a monopoly whereby students are paying $200 per book and have no choice in the matter, short of foregoing education.

If these textbook makers published in iBooks, students would be able to share books. So Inkling is their transparent brainchild to route around this. I suspect that if one were to dig deeply into the financial backing of Inkling, we'd find it is transparently supported by their so-called publishing partners. Note that one of the books featured in their store is "only" $120. The regular price being $185. Now what possible justification could there be for any ebook to be $120 other than pure greed and monopoly? They are not paying for ink or paper to publish full color photos. They're not printing it. They're not shipping it using petroleum. It's just gouging.

There's no reason they could not publish all of that content in iBooks, but Inkling is a terrible precedent because it sets up a more strict, more coercive ebook ecosystem on iOS and I sincerely hope any student is wise enough to reject it utterly.

The cost of a single chapter is what an entire ebook should cost. What a hideous and absurd model. And who has ever taken a course in their lives where the instructor only wanted them to reference one chapter? Are they going to start selling ebooks by individual paragraphs and sentences next? Buy a paragraph for the low, low price of just $.99.

In my opinion, this app is exactly the opposite of what electronic textbooks should be.

Mike, check out http://www.half.com
I've been able to sell text books there with amazing success. Even ones that are old editions and are 20 years old.

Seriously? "There are a number of books available"

Inkling has a grand total of 7, yes SEVEN, books. And two of those aren't yet available?

I don't see students buying ebook version of textbooks until they're able to resell them as they can with physical text books.