$1000 iPhone law exam review app sends traditional publisher running for cover
You readers were skeptical that BarMax, the iPhone app that offered up a full law prep system for $1000, would make too big a splash in the law prep community. But apparently that's exactly what happened -- three weeks later, BarBri, one of the more traditional competitors to the new app, has made significant changes to their pricing and service that appear to be aimed at keeping law students away from BarMax. First, they've decided to offer complete online access for free to every student that takes their courses (we don't know how much they charged previously, but it used to be an additional cost). Second, in direct opposition to BarMax's "buy once, use forever" deal, they've allowed students to save at least $2000 every time they retake the test courses, by offering retakes for free as well.
That's pretty incredible. Just by offering up one much cheaper alternative through Apple's iPhone platform, BarMax has already started to revamp the entire business. Of course, I couldn't tell you anything about the quality of these two programs (and whether either BarMax or BarBri is worth using at all), but clearly BarBri smells danger in the wind. It's just not possible to publish content the old way when even one competitor has an alternative through cheaper channels, and the App Store model is as cheap a channel as you can get.
Just imagine what's going to happen when the iPad opens up iBooks and launches the revolution in education publishing that everyone's talking about. The next twelve months are going to be very interesting for textbook customers and/or publishers.
