From Vox:
There’s a famous phrase: The first step in solving a problem is recognizing you’ve got one,” says Pearson CEO John Fallon. And for education company Pearson, the problem is also one of its key products: The textbook.
Since the 1970s, the business model for textbook makers has been to sell very expensive books to students, updating them every few years with new material to keep students paying top dollar. But online textbook rental services from companies like Chegg and Amazon have made it much easier to pay much less, and as a result Pearson’s revenues have fallen from $2 billion in 2013 to $1.3 billion today, Fallon said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher.
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