Do you remember the days of lugging around your overpriced heavy textbooks? This burden may be only a problem of the past.
At the end of July, Pearson launched a new Netflix style subscription service in the form of a mobile app for students to access textbooks in the US.
According to chief executive Andy Bird, the former chair of Walt Disney International that released Disney+ at the end of 2019, the app will “fundamentally change the way students access and experience college textbooks.”
For a competitive monthly subscription fee, students will gain access to books from the UK based publisher in addition to a range of other tools that will allow them to highlight sections of the textbooks, listen to non-robotic audio versions, create note cards and even take quizzes.
This new service will undoubtedly provide an additional revenue stream for the company.
Pearson will be targeting the roughly 10 million US higher education students who already use Pearson textbooks or online learning tools.
Currently, the service will charge $9.99 per month for a single Pearson ebook and $14.99 per month for access to 1,500 Pearson ebooks.
Bird is hoping to build life-long relationships with learners. He claims that the Pearson+ service is equipped with the same intuitive interface that students have come to expect from other popular music and streaming apps.
The publishing giant has already seen a 17% rise in sales, reaching £1.6 billion in the first six months of the financial year and a profit of £127 million, compared to their loss of £23 million in the previous year.
Cengage, one of Pearson’s competitors, already offers students an app that provides many of the same features Pearson’s new app does for no cost to students who buy Cengage products.
The senior vice president for strategy and finance at Cengage, Nhaim Khoury, has stated that more than 630,000 people have already downloaded their app in 2020, with 3.8 million notes and highlights made by students.
The bird, however, believes in Pearson+’s competitive advantage against other services claiming that “unlike other textbooks subscription services, students aren’t tied to plans that give them more than they need. And they can pay as they go. So, they don’t have large upfront costs at the beginning of the semester. Students gain time, money and simplicity.”
Time will tell if students see the value within the Pearson+ app and if it will make a difference in improving their grades and the weight of their backpack.
Nonetheless, Bird has already stated that the company has “extensive plans to roll out the model more broadly internationally, including into the United Kingdom”.
Chief financial officer Sally Johnson noted that students are currently encouraged by their professors in the US to purchase physical copies of their textbooks, which is in contrast to the UK. However, she noted that Pearson+ within a UK context “could be even more interesting for students given the breadth of products they will be given access to.”
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