Current Events > College textbooks get pricier as Pearson wants NFTs to track secondary sales

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://cointelegraph.com/news/textbook-publisher-wants-to-use-nfts-to-skim-the-used-textbook-market

The academic textbook publisher hopes to capture a portion of secondary market sales of textbooks by attaching NFTs to its digital titles.

Textbook publisher Pearson has revealed its plans to use nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to keep track of digital textbook sales and effectively diminish the secondary market.

According to a Bloomberg report on Monday, Pearson CEO Andy Bird wants to assign NFTs to its digital textbooks in order to keep better track of sales and capture revenue that was previously lost on the secondhand market.

Bird hopes the company can use the technology to earn commission on second-hand sales of its textbooks, which are normally done privately from one student to another. Bird noted:

Technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life. The possibility to participate in downstream revenues [] I find really interesting.

He noted that a Pearson textbook is typically resold up to seven times over the course of its life.

As Pearson explores its options with blockchain technology to scrap further sale revenues, Bird added that his company would be looking into ways his company can take advantage of the Metaverse:

We have a whole team working on the implications of the metaverse and what that could mean for us.

Making a move into the Metaverse could be a lucrative one in the medium term, as the market cap of the virtual world is to meet expectations by exceeding $50 billion by 2026.

The London-based publisher is part of a growing cohort of academic entities looking into the Metaverse. Last week, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) launched its first classroom in the Metaverse.

The companys plans to use NFTs have, however, been met with some criticism from the community.

Some academics, such as researcher at Intel Zane Griffin Talley Cooper decried Pearsons predatory academic publishing, though admitted that this is likely where NFT tech is moving. In his Tuesday tweet, Cooper added We gotta watch this stuff carefully.

Others say Pearsons supposed plans for NFTs are not actually using NFT technology at all.
Technology analyst Ian Cutress said in a Tuesday Tweet that NFT is just a buzzword here, and what Pearson is calling an NFT is just a code that second-hand buyers will have to pay a fee for in order to activate their digital books.

Pearson is already one of the largest publishers in the world with $4.2 billion in revenue in 2021. Their textbooks are used in high schools, colleges and universities around the world.

The company is on pace to beat that mark in 2022 as its first half revenues came in at $2.2 billion, and profits are up 14% to $208.7 million in the same period, according to the British publication Telegraph on Monday.

Honestly, fuck Pearson

Wow, on top of being super greedy and evil, they're now also batshit

Two scams joining forces to make education even worse. Truly inspiring.

I got a etextbook on Pearson's site and it sucks! You have to be online to see it, it loads pages super slowly, and you can't search text at all. I literally took to the high seas for a textbook I already bought just to have a much more convenient version of it >_>

Wow

capitalism!

In other words, Pearson publically admits that text book prices are a scam.

Wow. They can fuck off with that notion.

I've only come across thier KS3 Science, middle school equivalent for US, which was the textbook used at a school I taught at years ago. Genuinely wasn't fond of using it at all. And I've never worked in a school that used thier GCSE / A Level books.

So I'm curious as how many University/Colleges are using thier books for recommended reading.

Point is, I look at this and see excess greed and anti-consumer rights management for an inferior product.

I am so tired of American capitalism

If academia actually gave a shit, the $200+ textbooks would be shunned. Even more so when it's a $200+ pdf.

BTW, the textbook industry is the one where you have a moral obligation to "ARGHHHH MATEY!" whenever possible

Questionmarktarius posted...

If academia actually gave a shit, the $200+ textbooks would be shunned. Even more so when it's a $200+ pdf.

A lot of professors hate this shit and don't even use textbooks sometimes. Or I've had some just give me a link to pirate them.

why are previous editions of text books so quick to become obsolete? Professors say they aren't legally allowed to use old editions anymore even if it's a textbook that was just released last year or last semester.

We need laws banning NFTs or digital verification of educational, or physical goods.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

why are previous editions of text books so quick to become obsolete? Professors say they aren't legally allowed to use old editions anymore even if it's a textbook that was just released last year or last semester.

They change 1 word so they can say it's new and sell it 10000% over cost.

Unsuprised_Pika posted...

We need laws banning NFTs or digital verification of educational, or physical goods.

We'll sooner get a law mandating that

The high tech future was supposed to make things more affordable and accessible to everyone. Electronic textbooks? Oh boy, no printing or distribution costs! But shitty capitalists keep deliberately ruining it like this.

It is morally okay to steal college textbooks

God, this countrys a joke lmao

Wait wait wait...
Does the NFT creator get a commission every time it get sold?