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Ingram Buys Digital Textbook Distributor CourseSmart

Ingram 3405811164_d49a982c6e_m[1]Content Group announced on Monday that they had acquired one of their competitors.

CourseSmart, a company which had been founded in 2007 to provide teachers with digital course materials, is going to be merged with Vital Source Technologies, Ingram’s digital textbook wing.

CourseSmart is one of the leading digital textbook providers for students, and they stock over 40,000 titles. Their next largest competitor, with 4 million users, was Vital Source.

There’s no word of the sale price, but I have been told that CourseSmart has been up for sale for a couple years now. It was owned by a consortium of textbook publishers, and they’ve been keeping it going by pumping money into it year after year. They almost sold it to Kno last year, but that startup would not have been able to shoulder the obligations or the debt load. And then Kno went bankrupt, putting the kibosh on the deal.

CourseSmart’s strengths in inventory, instructor sampling and analytics will be integrated with Vital Source’s reader platform and global, scalable distribution network. By combining the two organizations, Vital Source will offer the world’s largest digital curricula catalog and provide better digital content solutions for the higher education community.

image by Ed Yourdon

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Comments


fjtorres March 3, 2014 um 3:16 pm

So, its a stampede to the educational market, huh?
Going to get real crowded real fast…

Nate Hoffelder March 3, 2014 um 3:27 pm

Yep. Inkling and the other independents had better look for a buyer. And this doesn’t bode well for Nook Media, does it?

fjtorres March 3, 2014 um 5:15 pm

Well, now…
Maybe the pivot towards education will help them find a buyer if there’s an educational ebook gold rush.


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