If a new app and software product from education tech company Kno takes off, the days of college kids selling textbooks back to the campus bookstore for beer money may be coming to an end—but that doesn’t mean students won’t have a little extra money in their pockets. Today, Kno rolls out its new textbook app, featuring enhanced, digital editions of over 100,000 popular textbook titles from pretty much all the major publishers at 30% to 50% off regular prices. Students who do not want to buy the digital text can rent it for a 180-day period.

And, while you’re at it, say goodbye to those heavy bookbags, too. “This is the new backpack,” Kno v-p of marketing Ousama Haffar, said holding his iPad, and shuffling through virtual shelves of textbooks at PW's office last week.

So far, surveys have shown that students have been slow to move to digital textbooks. But with powerful interactive features, and a broad array of publishers offering the largest selection of e-textbooks on the market, Kno is betting on a swift transition to digital, especially as the tablet markets surges in the coming years, and interactive, digital technology continues to shape the way kids learn, and teachers teach.

For students, the Kno software is available for free on the iPad, as well as on the Web, and even on Facebook. Indeed Kno's Facebook access allows students to open their Kno textbooks while in Facebook, jump to any page and search for other Kno textbooks in the Kno e-bookstore on Facebook. In addition to deeply discounted prices and a 15-day money-back guarantee (important for those would-be course-droppers), the software offers anytime, anywhere access to textbooks without having to lug around the physical book. And, the software offers some 60 powerful features, including:

  • Course Manager, which organizes all your e-textbooks and PDF documents class and semester
  • Journal, essentially digital notebook that can automatically transfer a student’s highlights, images, stickies, and other notes into a ready-made abstract of sorts.
  • Quiz Me, an interactive feature that turns any diagram in a textbook into an instant multiple-choice quiz.
  • Optimized Reading, including the ability to zoom in or out on pages, with page consistency so that page and chapter numbers match physical textbooks, and the ability to scroll pages, to quickly preview chapters.
  • Interactive features, which allow students to ask questions, post comments, or share their locations with friend.
  • Resources like a dictionary, and web search.

For publishers, meanwhile, Kno has developed an easy “ingestion platform” to convert and work with whatever content the textbooks include, whether text, full color illustrations, and even video or audio. All Kno’s publisher partners have to do is submit files—and so far, many have—including McGraw Hill, Pearson, Wiley, Mcmillan and Cengage Learning.

The enhanced app release marks something of a do-over for Kno in the quickly evolving digital textbook market. After scrapping plans to produce an oversized dual-screen educational tablet device, Kno shifted its focus to creating educational software for the iPad, releasing a beta version of the Kno app, along with a retail site. Kno CEO Osman Rashid, who also founded the textbook-rental company Chegg, said the company’s focus now is to “maintain the integrity of today’s textbook, while making it more engaging, efficient and social.”

Internal market research, meanwhile, backs up that renwed focus. A recent survey of some 500 college students commissioned by Kno, through Kelton Research, found that 71% of students want to go digital, and that perceptions of digital textbooks are shifting, with more students leaning toward digital textbooks, wary of both the the cost and the cumbersome nature of physical textbooks. Haffar said Kno hopes to reach 1 million downloads in the fall semester.

The Kno app is now available for free through the Apple App Store as well as through the Kno website.