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After 24 years of teaching math at the collegiate level, Northeastern University professor Dr. David Massey decided to change the way mathematics textbooks were created and distributed. What he saw was a space filled with overpriced books and difficult-to-understand text content.

Instead, he envisioned a world where digital textbooks were the standard, not the exception, and where getting the most recent version of a text was cheap and easy for students. So in 2008, he created the Worldwide Center of Mathematics (WCM), based in Cambridge, and began rethinking textbooks for the digital age.

“We’re not a typical tech startup,” says Brian Lepley, the Center’s Director of Business Development, in an interview this week. “We’re trying to innovate from the standpoint of the text and from the standpoint of the business model, because both really need to be changed.”

This fall, the Worldwide Center of Mathematics will release its first rich media textbook — a calculus book that meets the standards for high school advanced placement courses. When the first school bells ring, at least three high school classes will “crack” the PDF-based book — most easily consumed from an iPad — and every Northeastern freshmen in the engineering track will also be downloading it for consumption via their iPads or personal computers.

What’s more, these calc books are actually being released on a free-mium model. That’s right. The basic PDF version is totally free, and it can’t be printed, but it does include a 45-minute video lecture embedded at the beginning of each section. That’s something all WCM books will likely include moving forward.

“You don’t have to ever read the textbooks if you don’t want to,” points out Lepley. “The premium version will include the video lectures from the free version, but also video solutions to problems at the end of each chapter. We’re also in talks with a number of different technology providers — including Wolfram|Alpha — to help us create interactive visuals for all the lessons.”

How much are the premium, rich media versions?

“We’re hoping to release these at a price-point around $10,” says Lepley. The company intends to reduce the cost of their books dramatically by streamlining the creation and publication chains.

They call this business model “Student Choice,” and it also includes access to a traditional, printed version of each text for about $30 per copy. Students have the choice to grab the free version, upgrade to the premium one, or buy the printed text. Consumers have access to the whole package — premium digital plus printed text — for approximately $40.

In addition to creating more options for students, WCM are also offering the content in what the company calls a Texbooks as a Service (TaaS) model. This way, they’ll be able to re-release their books in updated versions much more frequently than the  three-year cycle many textbook publishers are currently operating on.

“We don’t want to wrap it in digital rights,” says Lepley. “If students are going to steal it, at the end of the day, we can’t prevent that. So what Textbooks as a Service does is allow us to get around that. We’re charging Northeastern on a per-see basis. They have 500 or so students enrolled for their calculus 1 class. We’re charging them $5 per student, per semester. Then the students will have free access to the PDF. If they want to purchase the traditional textbook, they also have an option to do that at a discount rate.”

Lepley says the Worldwide Center of Mathematics is working on putting textbook purchasing on the budgets of instructors and learning institutions, rather than students. The business makes sense because the WCM will be asking the schools to purchase rights to their books every semester while guaranteeing that every student will have the same latest version. In the eyes of WCM, textbooks are simply too expensive for students, according to Lepley.

The company is currently done creating and editing their first book, Worldwide Differential Calculus, which is the text that will be taught at Northeastern and a handful of other institutions this fall. They’re hoping their next book, Worldwide Integral Calculus, will be available in time for the spring semester. The third text, Worldwide Multivariable Calculus, is on the horizon as well.

“It took Dave about five months to write the first text. Textbook writing is still textbook writing. We’re trying to make the process faster, but we still have to write 500-or-so pages,” says Lepley.

We can’t wait to see how instructors and institutions respond to the business models and dynamic textbooks the Worldwide Center of Mathematics is presenting. This is surely something that could shake up the textbook publishing industry and help reduce the ballooning costs of education.

What do you think about what the Worldwide Center of Mathematics is trying to do with digital math books? Is all book content about to be disrupted by the Tablet Age? Let us know below.