Winter break is quickly coming to an end and students nationwide are getting ready for the upcoming term. We recently caught up with a returning freshman to find out what they were most and least excited about as they prepared to head back to school.

It was no surprise when this student noted the high cost of textbooks as something they hated about going back to school. Students around the country are agitated by rising college textbook and course material costs and are seeking lower-cost course materials whenever possible. This particular student was planning on ordering course materials for the upcoming term, despite cost, simply because they are required for class.  

Additional interview questions can be found below. 

Akademos, Inc., has recognized nine students at colleges across the country for their creativity in this year’s Akademos/TextbookX Textbook Scholarship Contest. The first place winner, two runner-up winners, and six honorable mention winners all received a textbook scholarship to apply towards course materials for fall 2014.

To participate in the contest, students posed with their favorite book and submitted their self-taken photos with a creative caption to the TextbookX Facebook page.  After uploading their#BookShelfie —a play on the word “bookshelf” and the social media “selfie” trend— students encouraged friends and family to vote for their entry.

TextbookX, the Akademos direct-to-student ecommerce platform, is pleased to announce its second annual textbook scholarship photo contest.

We received a visit from Akademos founder and chairman of the board Brian Jacobs today!

As noted previously on our blog, Brian left Akademos to start a new company focused on Open Educational Resources called panOpen. panOpen was selected to be part of the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator program and has been busy building an OER platform for a list of new client schools. To sign up for panOpen's OER pilot program, visit them at http://www.panopen.org/.

As a virtual bookstore provider, part of our philosophy is that you really don't need a large physical footprint to sell textbooks. So, sometimes I grapple with how much exhibit space to get at the education conferences we attend (one booth is 10' by 10').  Does an innovative education technology company that is trying to change mindsets about the business model of a college bookstore really need 800 square feet to get the message across? That is a question that you, the college administrator, would probably be able to help me answer. But let's agree that selling to CFOs is a little different than selling to students.

As an education technology company that provides online bookstore services to schools and their students, Akademos has always had anecdotal information from clients and students regarding the changing landscape for textbook services. We sought to validate the concerns that college chief financial officers (CFOs) had expressed to us about the future of their textbook services given the challenges presented by a vast marketplace of external competition, and the requirements of meeting new digital delivery needs presented by growing online curriculum.