Publishing giant Pearson boldly announced recently that it was moving towards a digital-first strategy, thus rendering the century old traditional textbook model as good as dead. Meanwhile, higher education specialist Cengage has been steadily expanding its online textbook subscription offering globally, experimenting with new cost-effective digital distribution models to cater to the Netflix and Spotify generation.

There are a number of reasons why, in this day and age, digital-first strategies make more sense than ever for education publishers.