A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story

Abstract

Many college students and their families are concerned about the high costs of textbooks. Ebooks have been proposed as one potential solution, open-source textbooks have also been explored. A company called Flat World Knowledge produces and gives away open-source textbooks in a way they believe to be financially sustainable. This article reports an initial study of the financial sustainability of the Flat World Knowledge open-source textbook model.