Ads Coming to Textbooks
Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses this fall, students won’t pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have ads for companies including FedEx Kinko’s and Pura Vida coffee.Selling ad space keeps newspapers, magazines, Web sites and television either cheap or free. But so far, the model hasn’t spread to college textbooks _ partly for fear that faculty would consider ads undignified. The upshot is that textbooks now cost students, according to various studies, about $900 per year.
Now, a small Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall — mostly for business courses — completely free.
Igor M. (BizMord Blog) on August 28th, 2006 1:01 pm
As I mentioned on my blog when I wrote about this … http://www.bizmord.com/Blog/archives/101
The idea is excellent. This is Permission marketing. You give people something for their attention. In this case students will appreciate companies because they’ll know who paid their bill.
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