The Xplanation

We are releasing our research report on digital textbooks this week, and as an extension of our study,will be posting segments from an interview with the report’s principal author, Rob Reynolds. Here is a brief summary of the report’s conclusions.

Over the next five years, digital textbook sales in the United States will surpass 18% of combined new textbook sales for the Higher Education and Career Education markets. This increase will boost revenues for digital textbooks to more than $1 billion and necessitate a general overhaul of traditional textbook production processes. The growth will also create avenues for new content publishers to enter the textbook market, lead to fundamental shifts in purchasing patterns around learning materials, and expedite the formal adoption of open educational resources to augment premium digital content.

Our five-year projections assume a current market share of 0.5% for digital textbooks in the U.S., and an average yearly increase in sales growth of approximately 100% over the next five years. We project that growth to taper to approximately 30% annual growth for the ensuing five years (2015-2019).

(You can read the full report here, or download the PDF version)

We sat down with Rob Reynolds to discuss with us the assumptions behind the study on digital textbooks, its broader implications, and some of the big changes he sees coming to the textbook publishing industry. In this first segment, he explains the possible implications of a growth in digital textbook sales from 0.5% to 18%-20% of new textbook revenue.

Interview Part 1 (4:21)