Pearson, the largest publisher of college textbooks in the US, has announced Pearson Plus, a new subscription service for digital textbooks. The Pearson Plus app, available in both mobile and desktop form, will be available on US college campuses this fall and is expected to roll out globally in the future.
There are two subscription tiers. Enrolled students can pay $9.99 per month to access one textbook at a time or $14.99 per month for access to the company’s full library (a selection of over 1,500 e-books). The app provides various other study aids as well, including flashcards, annotations, and customizable fonts.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22606423/pearson-plus-college-textbook-subscription-service-app-launch
I’m not even sure if this is news as most uni bookstores have had a digital rental schemes going for a few years and the real value of this scheme doesn’t really kick in unless you have multiple lecturers using Pearson texts, but it’s probably better than killing trees for products that are commercially redundant every 2 years.
The whole digital text book thing has been a bugbear of mine for a while. I still don’t know why more Australian unis aren’t using Open Education resources. Seriously, do your student’s a favour and go to https://www.oercommons.org/ to see all the free texts and resources.