The textbook price increases were once thought to be a genius way to increase profit margins. However like all goods and services, even those with the most inelastic demand curves have a point at which people will begin to substitute them for another good. Textbook piracy is at an all time high and publishers profits have fallen significantly. The long run solution is subscription - access to all the content required by the students at an affordable monthly price. I'm one of the co-founders of Bibliotech the Spotify for Textbooks (www.bibliotech.education). We are working with Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis and Cambridge University Press to achieve exactly that. Our challenge is convincing publishers to provide the necessary content under a subscription model
This is an interesting angle - have you had any feedback from colleges themselves? What's your expected price-per-semester for an average student without the 14-day-free trial?
With regards to the UK universities/colleges which we currently in the feedback is generally super positive since we can provide books in a more accessible format with a much lower upfront cost.
Regarding price point (converted from GBP to USD) we currently have in Chemistry:
1) A premium plan with all the textbooks a student currently buys for ~$17/month ($102/sem) plus all optional reading
2) All optional reading for ~$4/month ($24/sem)
