Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

A while back, there was a discussion about the problems of trying to get text books in a decent ePub format, when one had to do deal with equations, graphs etc. People who get the KDP newsletter have likely seen this, but I thought I'd mention it, in case there was interest.

Apparently KDP has been working this issue. They say:
"You can now use the beta of Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator to easily convert PDFs of your textbooks, course notes, study guides, reference material, and other educational content that includes complex visual information like charts, graphs, and equations into Kindle books."

More info here:
https://kdp.amazon.com/edu?ref=85&...

This sounds like it's still in beta, so I'd expect teething pains. But it's interesting that they are taking the problem on. Maybe (hopefully) the days of paying $120 for a calculus text are numbered.

The cost of textbooks is due to the monopoly in supply and the ties between publishers and the teachers who specify them. Nothing to do with the cost of production. Until there is proper regulation to cut out the sharp practices, nothing will change.

Richard wrote: "The cost of textbooks is due to the monopoly in supply and the ties between publishers and the teachers who specify them. Nothing to do with the cost of production. Until there is proper regulation..."

Except that regulation supports monopolies more often then not. Here, at least, it's not a matter of regulation but people putting up with the whole unsupportable structure. Just the idea of Kindle text books threatens that monoply, and could be another factor to hasten the bursting of the bubble in higher education. (In the US. I'm not familiar with other places.)