Why Textbooks With Ads Might Not Work In Higher Ed

A $4 billion-a-year business cannot change fundamentally overnight; the shift from printed to electronic textbook will take years. In the meantime, a small publisher of college textbooks, Freeload Press of St. Paul, seeks to take advantage of this flux with a new concept: providing free e-textbooks to students. The catch? Ads are inserted within the text. Textbooks used in the classroom are, like the instructors themselves, extensions of a university’s autonomy and no more likely to be considered an appropriate place for corporate ads than the classroom lectern (or the instructor’s forehead). Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/business/yourmoney/27digi.html?ex=1157342400&en=69340275b670ef16&ei=5070&emc=eta1