Digital textbook rental company Chegg announced some time ago that they were taking the company public and inviting investors to come on board. While that’s a fairly common business strategy, joined recently by companies like social media giant Twitter, the current status of the stock sale is a positive sign for where the public and publishing industries are taking digital textbooks.
Priced at $11.50US per share and seeking the sale of 15 million shares, that would put Chegg with $172.5 million to take the company in a bigger direction. There is a provision in the stock prospectus for the number of shares to go even higher. At this point, Chegg is prepared to meet with potential investors and demonstrate what their intentions are, basically showing off the bang-for-the-buck that a sum like that would help them create.
It will be interesting to see what Chegg can produce with this level of investment can provide, given that Chegg already has over 180,000 titles in its catalog, with over 100,000 of those titles being digital textbooks, which it rents out for a semester at a time. Chegg has already created digital programs to help students with things like applications, financial aid searches and acquisitions, and more. The company estimates that around 30% of the college students in the US have access to material through its catalog, leading to its already 23% revenue increase this year.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.