The Pendulum
NEWS
Thursday, January 19, 2006 • Page 3
Company makes free textbooks possible
CEO says just because tuition increases doesn’t mean textbook prices should too
Justine Hite/ Photographer
Textbooks line the baci of the campus shop in row upon row of shelves. Used books
can be bought at a lower price than new ones, but no book here is free.
lessica Frizen
News Editor
Sophomore Brian Shenkin said the most
he’s ever spent on textbooks is $500, as he
carried a stack of about seven textbooks to
the front of the campus shop. As a worker
in Elon’s campus bookstore for two and a
half years, senior Molly Steinberg said she’s
seen a student pay as much as $1,000 for
textbooks in a single semester.
The amounts that students pay for text
books each year may drastically decrease
over the next few years due to a new text
book company that is out to sell a new type
of textbook: free ones.
“With the cost of college skyrocketing and
with aid not keeping pace, we want to see as
many students as possible have free text
books,” said Tom Doran, CEO and founder
of Freeload Press. “(Textbooks) are too
important to go without . . . we’re seeing
textbook purchases declining as tuition
increases.”
Freeload Press, which was created in St.
Paul, Minn., gave its downloadable college
textbooks a test run this past fall. Fifty-one
instructors from 20 colleges used the com
pany’s e-books, and because of the positive
feedback from both students and professors,
175 colleges and universities are registered
to use them for the spring 2006 semester.
Elon University finance professor, Wonhi
Synn, will be the first professor in North
Carolina to provide free textbooks to his
students next semester.
“The reason I’m trying this out for my sec
tion is because the textbook I’m using is
good quality,” he said. “I would not adopt
something that is sub-quality just because
it’s free.”
Students in Synn’s Fundamentals of
Financial Managing class will download
their e-books using Adobe Acrobat format
from Freeload Press’ Internet Portal,
freeloadpress.com. If they would rather
have a hardcopy, the company also offers
paperback e-books with advertising, which
are sold for 60 percent less than the original
cost of the textbook.
“We debated about using a browser base,
but students want a sense of ownership,”
Doran said, “They want the information
right on the laptop or desktop so they can
have at it any time they want without wor
rying about being connected.”
Synn said he’s going to take advantage of
the different textbook types Freeload Press
offers. “I’m going to give my students
options so they can read chapters on the
computer screen, they can download it, and
for students that cannot do that, and they
want a printed copy, they can buy that
online,” he said.
Freeload Press is selling the printed copy
of the finance book for $25 with a $4 ship
ping and handling fee, according to Synn.
He said that’s comparable to the regular
price of $150 for finance books.
Freeload Press is currently using 10 corpo
rate sponsors. When businesses sponsor
Freeload Press, they are able to put adver
tisements in the front of the printed book
and in chapter openings of e-textbooks.
Doran said that the more sponsorship the
company gets increases the number of
books they can publish. “If we can save at
least one textbook per year per student,
that’s the first step,” he said. “When we see
that students want more books, we want to
provide more books, and more sponsorship
means more titles.”
Synn said he’s looked through the e-books,
and doesn’t think the ads are intrusive.
“Students can easily bypass the ads while
reading a chapter,” he said.
So what’s the possibility of every student
getting all of their textbooks for free in the
> ^ next couple years? Doran said
it may be a longer project than we may
hope. But he also said that these first steps
made by Freeload Press are meant to cause
a reaction and make an example for other
companies to follow.
“That’s our goal,” Doran said. “We’re try
ing to show other publishers that we work,
we can get sponsors and we can get aca
demics to use the commercial textbook.”
Synn said that he’s also willing to spread
the news if he and his students like the
material.
“If it works, if my students like it and it’s
doable and effective, then I’m going to
encourage it to other professors,” he said.
Freeload Press is the first media and pub
lishing company to adopt the idea of using
commercial sponsoring to reduce the price
of textbooks. Doran said it was a collabora
tive effort to pull it all together. The
founders are a group of authors, academics,
advertisers, publishers and supporting ven
dors, all with backgrounds in academic pub
lishing.
Doran has worked in the publishing indus
try for 24 years. The founders have seen
increases in tuition and other college
expenses, and they have the mission to
make college course work more affordable.
“It’s clear that next to the lecture, the text
book is probably the most important tool for
the student to use in order to learn, and not
all students are buying their school materi
als because they simply don’t have money
for it,” Doran said. “We want to limit the
financial concerns of going to college.”
Contact Jessica Frizen at
pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.
It’s clear that next to the lecture, the textbook is probably the
most important tool for the students to use in order to learn, and
not all students are buying their school materials because they
simply don’t have the money for it.
—Tom Doran, CEO and Founder of Freeload Press