Professor Noel Capon adopts "pay what you wish" model for online textbook
Professor Noel Capon has something in common with his students: he thinks the price of textbooks has gotten out of hand. “It’s a serious social issue,” he says.
Capon likens the landscape of the textbook industry to that of the airline industry in the 1950s and ’60s, describing it as a “cozy oligopoly” in which the different players “compete for authors and over the quality of the books but not on price.”
To help ease the financial burden, Capon is allowing students to pay what they wish to use the online version of his text Managing Marketing in the 21st Century. The pay-what-you-wish model was made famous by the band Radiohead, who allowed customers to download their most recent album, In Rainbows, for what they thought it was worth. The print version of the text, which sells for $45, is priced about $100 less than its competitors.
Read the entire story on the Public Offering blog.