The Pearson publishing house turns to eBooks to avoid second hand textbooks. They didn't like the book exchange very much.
Textbooks are expensive and a measure that is requested a lot is that, taking advantage of new technologies such as document readers on computers and tablets, free teaching units and eBooks are created with the contents and the syllabus. But this would mean that publishers will lose a lot of money from the sale of textbooks. Now they want to take advantage of new technologies and DRM to their advantage.
This is the case of the Pearson publishing house, which has declared that it is going to abandon the field of physical textbooks in favor of its ebook versions. We are talking about the largest educational publisher in the world. It will not put them up for sale in physical format, and those it will put into circulation will be loaned to libraries and with fewer updates, leaving those who turn to it with outdated information according to school curricula.
All this so that students have to buy the digital versions with DRM. In the statements they have given they have said that this change will make them much more effective by updating digital books more often and making them more interactive. But it is for them who have a dominant position in the market and are going to pressure students to buy or subscribe to their service.
A large publisher will eliminate physical textbooks by imposing their digital
The exchange of textbooks is a way that basic, advanced and university education is not available to a few. Selling your old books from last year to buy the next one is a practice used by millions of families around the world and publishers push by slightly modifying books to simulate that they are out of date. But the reality is that they have now seen the DRM reef in eBooks, which will continue to earn money with the universal knowledge that many students need for their studies. If it is not possible to get physical textbooks because they are limited as library loans and have outdated information, and done deliberately, they are forcing themselves to use their proprietary and high-cost systems by taking advantage of their leading position. A practice that borders on monopoly.
Source BBC
