On the podcast this week, Eric Frank, co-founder and president of Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of commercial, openly licensed college textbooks, discusses the company and its business model, which he compares to that of Red Hat. In the podcast Frank addresses moral hazards of the traditional college textbook publishing model, the company’s genesis, products and services it offers, how it makes money, and why it appeals to students, professors, and authors.
Related Readings
- Building a Better Model: Eric Frank on Flat World Knowledge (.pdf)
- “Flat World schools textbook publishers with free Web editions”, at Ars Technica
- “Textbook case”, Westchester County Business Journal
- “Flat World Knowledge: The Textbook Case for Disruption”, at bNET
Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus, Nick Carr on what the internet is doing to our brains, Gina Trapani and Anil Dash on crowdsourcing, James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.
So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.