Boffo Biology Book Has Brain-Bending $10 Million Budget
October 26, 2010
A not-for-profit has announced a massive new biology textbook that, when complete, will have cost $10 million to develop. That’s just for content creation; it doesn’t include marketing and sales expenses. (It will be digital-only, so there are no print costs.) Before clicking on that link, be ready to exercise a little willing suspension of disbelief.
To put a $10 million development budget into perspective, consider that total life-of-edition sales of the 8th edition of Campbell Biology (the market-leading book) top out only slightly north of that number. Or that I have worked for houses that didn’t have $10 million for their ENTIRE development budget, let alone one book.
This looks like a cool product, and the affiliation with E.O. Wilson will certainly garner some attention, but that’s ten times (at least!) what the traditional publishers spend on development of a “AAA” title. If this heralds the future of textbooks, that means higher barriers to entry, less competition, and increased costs to students (and school districts, as our friend Matt MacInnis from Inkling points out in the article).
Sure, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation plans to charge one-tenth the price of a traditional book, but is that really a sustainable model? Consider, for example, what it will cost to continually revise this product…and market it…and support it…
That doesn’t sound like a solution to The Textbook Problem to me.
October 26, 2010 at 9:39 pm
[...] Interesting comments from Stephen Solomon. [...]
November 7, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I agree with your comment that $10,000,000 on development is an enormous sum. However, we need to realize that this is the first prototype product with all of the bells and whistles. Just as we have seen with innovation in technology, the second and third wave of interactive textbooks will cost less to develop and be affordable for students, we’ll get there!
December 4, 2010 at 7:49 pm
[...] Interesting comments from Stephen Solomon. [...]
January 26, 2012 at 3:07 pm
[...] side note: Regardless of how pretty it is, any textbook that costs $10 million to make is insane and archetypal of what is wrong with the industry, not a “stunning [...]