EasyBks — Creating a New System

This is the third week of our blog; and we finally came up with a name. Since our goal is not only to reduce prices for students on textbooks, but also make things easier for students, schools, authors, and publishers; in terms of saving time, money, and creating connections; we decided to come up with the name EasyBks. Our goal for the project is to make textbook handling and purchasing easier.

For this week we focused more on looking outside the box; instead of focusing on book-sharing between students, we focused on looking towards how our system can benefit alumni, schools, professors, authors, publishers, and schools. We also looked at what changes we could apply to benefit the textbook industry.

First we attacked the PROBLEMS we had with the current format of our idea:

1. We need to keep track of the books our customers/ students borrow. *Come up with with an online book tracking system. Not tracking who students are sharing with and how long they are supposed to keep them will make it easier for problems and conflicts to come up between students. We also want the system to be one that will keep books in the system for students to borrow.
2. What about when authors come out with new editions for their books? *This is a big problem, because often professor will require that students have the current edition, because of changes made and new updated information; but the new editions are always more expensive. Taking this in mind, we thought it would be cool if students only had to purchase the updates and changes made to a book, that way the students can purchase a later edition if they so choose, and spend less money (this is especially true if the student already owns the later edition).
3. Legalities? *If we would like to suggest to authors and publishers to work with our system and create small books/pamphlets that simply contain all of the changes and updates made to the new book, what legalities would be have to go through? More than likely, when these books go into publishing they will have to go through a different line of approval(s). We must also look into how this will effect revenue for authors and publishers.
4. Working with the schools, alumni, authors, and publishers. *In order to come up with a system that works efficiently between this line of workers, we will have to create a new line of connections. This is important for creating new relationships, come up with better solutions, and assurance that everyone understands what is happening and produce less conflicts.

After recognizing these issues and coming up with ideas on how to fix these, we decided to come up with ideas other than a book-sharing system and create a new business model canvas.

This business model canvas focused on Customer Segments and Higher-Ed faculty. Through some research we have discovered that companies are starting to lose money on sales from their books because students are finding ways to obtain their books for free or as cheap a price as possible on the internet or outside sources. Solution: There would be no need for students to find other ways to obtain books if the cost wasn’t so high; so, if we created a system where students could purchase the updates for new books, then we could at least provide some revenue back into the company. This wouldn’t be a huge book for students to purchase and they could save a lot of money. Companies and authors wouldn’t make as much money compared to students purchasing entire textbooks, but at least it would put some revenue back into the company rather than very little or none and provide the student(s) an additional intrinsic value for the book by taking away some of the hardships associated with cost.

Update System: Because we want authors to publish updates and changes on textbooks, we thought it would be better to create an online system, that comes from the school but goes through our system; and authors and publishers would make updates on their online book. We are also going to have to come up with a system that tracks the changes authors make and how that with determine the price of the book. Furthermore, if our system also goes through the school, then we can probably have scholarships for textbook apply to the updated books we have on our system for students.

keeping all of these things in mind, students would have to be able to log in with their student portal to access the book, they would not be able to print (too easy to share with other students), and it would go through a small subscription fee, so students can have the option of only having access to the book updates for that semester that they are in the class.

Because our approach we are taking to the system has changed we decided that for our next interviews we should be more focused on legal systems, publishers, authors, and head school alumni. We want to be able to see if this is a system that schools would want to be apart of. We also want to know the details of what goes into publishing a book, and what would need to be changed if we want to take this approach to the system, how we would apply costs, and if authors and publishers would be willing to work with a system such as this.

We have already started a list of possible publishing companies and authors to interview, and will begin the process of getting these interviews this week:

PUBLISHERS:

American Scholars Press, Inc. — contact@americanscholarspress.com — http://www.americanscholarspress.com/contacts.html

Apex Learning, Inc. — http://www.apexlearning.com/Company/Contact.htm

American School of Classical Studies at Athens (The) — http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/publications/

Cengage Learning — http://www.cengage.com/contact/

AUTHORS:

Godfrey Muganda- Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Data Structures (3rd Edition) — https://www.facebook.com/gaddisbooks/ — Message here

Cheryl Hamilton -Communicating for Results: A Guide for Business and the Professions — http://www.salem.edu/directory/people/cheryl-hamilton.html

NEXT STEPS:

• Interview authors, publishers, legals systems, schools, etc.
• modify business canvas based on new research and interview findings.
• Start formatting a system.