MediaFile

Netflix model spreads to college textbooks

E-textbooks may be the way of the future for college campuses, but some scrappy companies are banking on the here and now by offering a solution to bring low-cost textbooks to students, and in some ways they’re taking a page out of movie rental company Netflix Inc’s playbook.

New college textbooks are a $4.5 billion business for dominant players such as Pearson PLC, privately held Cengage Learning and McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.  But upstart companies such as Chegg and BookRenter.com are gaining momentum by offering used books at a discount on their websites, and shipping them to students, who later ship the books back when they are done with them.

If that sounds a little like Netflix’s business model, it may not be that much of a coincidence. Marc Randolph, who was a co-founder of Netflix, is a board member on the privately-held BookRenter.com.

“Very similar to Netflix, we are going to get you your educational content at the most affordable price and the way the students want it,” said Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of BookRenter.com.

Maghsoodnia said the total available market for the used college textbook market is about $4 billion, and his company is in a race with Chegg to capture that market, although at the moment it is only a third the size of Chegg. Maghsoodnia said that BookRenter’s annual revenue is under $50 million, but growing fast.

With new devices such as Apple Inc’s iPad helping drive e-books, research firm Simba Information expects digital sales to grow to 11 percent of overall textbook sales by 2013, compared to 4 percent this year.

But some are expecting the ease of rented textbooks, which are often a third the price of a new textbook and are still cheaper than a digital text, to keep attracting students, perhaps at the expense of e-textbooks.

Layoffs hit The Washington Post after BusinessWeek, AP

Robert MacMillan

Nov 20, 2009 13:38 EST

Several media reporters wrote on Twitter on Thursday that this was one of the worst weeks in journalism, and it’s hard to argue with them. BusinessWeek is canning a third of its staff as Bloomberg gets ready to buy the magazine. The Associated Press is laying off 90 people as part of its effort to cut payroll costs by 10 percent this year.

And now The Washington Post is laying off staff, sources told me on Friday, and a spokeswoman confirmed.

The Post has cut an unknown number of washingtonpost.com workers, the website folks who until now have worked separately at the dot-com headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the Post’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. One source told me up to 10 are going. That’s not as big a number as other places you’ve read about lately, but it’s still a painful cut. (Disclosure: I worked for The Washington Post Co. from 1998 to 2005)

Sources shared several names with me, but until those people confirm that they were laid off, I don’t want to publish them. What I can say is that there were several journalists and marketing people among the casualties. They are getting severance packages, but they are accompanied by non-disclosure agreements which prevent them from discussing their firings. Apparently, some of my sources said, they will be out of work by Dec. 31.

Why is this happening? Here’s what spokeswoman Kris Coratti said:

As part of the work we’re doing to turn around the business that supports our journalism, there were a small number of individual positions eliminated as a result of efficiencies we have found through our new structure and through new technology, and those have taken place in both print and online.

The background: The Post’s web staff, as I mentioned, is joining the main newsroom as they eliminate the gap that the paper set up many years ago by making its website a separate operation. The company, all my sources tell me, want to cut staff before the end of the year because next year the remainder would become unionized. Web staff are not unionized now. That, my sources say, would make it much more difficult for the money-losing Washington Post to cut costs by laying off people because they would be protected to some extent by their contract.

BusinessWeek, where the action happens off-screen

Robert MacMillan

Sep 15, 2009 19:30 EDT

McGraw-Hill set Tuesday as the due date for bids for the ailing BusinessWeek magazine, and at least as of 7:30 pm eastern time, nothing at all has happened. Since this is one of those stories where I’ve encountered absolutely no fruitful sources, I’ve relied on reading the reports of other people.

So what’s going to happen to the business news weekly? Let’s catch up with the latest:

It will not go to Lazard chief Bruce Wasserstein. The owner of New York magazine has enough to deal with in the slumping publishing world already, so he’s gone, reports BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine.

Fine himself is bowing out of the action after presenting us with most of it. He and wife Laurel Touby (a media maven in her own right) are taking a six-month sabbatical to do more fun things in other parts of the world.

Bloomberg LP remains interested, along with various other bidders, say various media reports. As you might expect, no one there is talking to us evil arch-rivals at Reuters. I hear from Bloomberg journalists that no one there is talking to them either. Too bad, because it was Bloomberg journalist Greg Bensinger who helped break the story. (And so much the worse, as Bensinger is on honeymoon at the moment.)

No matter who buys it up, New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford tells us, via a memo she obtained, that Evercore — the banker group shopping BusinessWeek — is promising 20 percent layoffs across the board, including 55 of 217 journalists. 25 percent. Ouch!

The one bit of original reporting that I can offer you comes from the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference that I attended on Tuesday. I asked McGraw CEO Terry McGraw if keeping the magazine and scrapping the whole sale process is a possibility. His answer: “At this point all options are open.” He also said that this is a time for BusinessWeek to explore all options, such as going online only, or any other number of alternatives. They don’t all necessarily include selling the magazine.

Whither Windows 7 and its (expected) wake?

Franklin Paul

Jul 13, 2009 11:48 EDT

A lot may be riding on the release of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, which is due in October, not the least of which is an expected rush of advertising to support everything from the software itself, to the computers it will run on to the rival computers it will not run on.

This surge of business is seen coming just as the holiday shopping session gets under way and could help spark the economic turnaround that some suggest will come later this year.

Or maybe not.

According to a survey by ScriptLogic, six in 10 companies plan to skip buying Windows 7. Some will pass on the added cost of the upgrade, while others are concerned about compatibility with existing applications.

Perhaps consumers will be less squemish about Windows 7 than businesses. Then again, neither were exactly thrilled about Microsoft’s last upgrade — Windows Vista….

Keep an eye on:

• McGraw-Hill hires Evercore as bankers in effort sell BusinessWeek (Bloomberg)
• Pandora gets financing (TechCrunch)
• Microsoft’s Bing – so far so good, trafficwise (New York Times)