Pearson Wants To Sell Textbooks As ‘NFTs’ To Replace Old Hand-Me-Downs

Textbooks are notoriously expensive, so it’s common for students to recover their expenses by selling texts they no longer have use for. As it seems, this personal exchange of scribbled-in, over-highlighted copies could eventually be a thing of the past.

Pearson, one of the biggest textbook publishers in the world, plans to start a new chapter for secondhand book sales. As Bloomberg reports, CEO Andy Bird revealed in an investor’s meeting that he was considering distributing digital textbooks as “NFTs,” which would allow the publisher to continue making revenue as the books get passed onto new hands.

Traditionally, hand-me-downs are sold behind the company’s back, but integrating blockchain technology would enable it to track the current owner of a product even way down the road.

With this new format, digital books could each contain a unique trackable code, and this gets reactivated every time someone else takes over a copy.

Pearson, which produces textbooks for high schools, colleges, and universities, says its existing books can be resold for as many as seven times—of which only the first can be identified.

Tech analyst Dr Ian Cutress, however, is skeptical about whether the textbooks would truly be non-fungible tokens.

“NFT is just a buzzword here,” Cuttress tweeted. He said that all the publisher would be doing is sell a unique code and charge subsequent buyers a fee to reactivate it.

Nevertheless, it seems the company has other plans to embrace Web 3.0. Bird, as quoted by Bloomberg, said Pearson now has “a whole team” focused on “the implications of the metaverse.”

[via Evening Standard, The Guardian, Cointelegraph, cover photo 59650408 © Ken Wolter | Dreamstime.com]