iBooks Textbooks
I don’t pretend to be very familiar with the publishing world, but I’m not willing to bet against Apple at this point. I remember hearing that 30% was a lot off the top for apps. Then that charging for a developer’s license and forcing developers to use obj-C would mean that the app store would never take off. We still hear that seemingly arbitrary rejections from the store will be the end of them.
Access to the iOS market, and the distribution mechanism to address it continue to make these costs worth paying.
Will the same hold true for this market? Time will tell.
I will say that the Textbook industry is ripe for getting shaken up. Revving version numbers to kill the used market, only available in heavy paper volumes and sold to intermediaries instead of consumers? If nothing else, I’m confident that this will help shake things up.
