CourseSmart, a privately held company headquartered in

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ; ) is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula. About 20 miles (32 km) south of San Francisco, the city borders Burlingame, California, Burlingame to the north, Hillsborough, California, Hillsboro ...

founded in 2007, was a provider of eTextbooks and digital course materials. It was acquired by

Ingram Content Group Ingram Content Group is an American service provider to the book publishing industry, based in La Vergne, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Ingram Industries. Shawn Morin is CEO, and John R. Ingram is chairman of Ingram Industries. History T ...

subsidiary VitalSource Technologies in early 2014, and was integrated into the parent company under the VitalSource name and platform by 2016.

Company history

Launch and growth

CourseSmart was founded in 2007 by the

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after compl ...

publishers Macmillan,

Cengage Learning Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders ...

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, i ...

McGraw-Hill Education McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referen ...

, and Pearson. CourseSmart offered access to e-textbooks via web browser from its foundation in 2007. The company allowed readers to rent e-books, rather than buying physical textbooks at an increased cost. Readers had access to both downloadable and online versions of texts. In August 2009 CourseSmart launched an iPhone app, followed by an iPad app in August 2010, and an Android app in April 2011. By September 2011, its eTextbooks catalogue had more than 20,000 digital titles, and purchased books could be printed at no extra charge. By 2014, the company had partnered with around 50 publishers and provided an estimated 90% of the e-textbooks used in higher education. Despite being one of the two largest ebook providers at the time, CourseSmart had remained fairly small at the time of its acquisition by VitalSource Technologies.

Acquisition by VitalSource Bookshelf

CourseSmart was acquired by

subsidiary VitalSource Technologies Inc. in early 2014. Prior to full integration, VitalSource eTextbooks could not be read on the CourseSmart eTextbook platform and

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, and both platforms operated separately with no crossover. Full integration under the VitalSource platform was completed by 2016.

References

{{Reflist

External links

VitalSource
official website Educational technology companies of the United States Companies based in San Mateo, California Book rental Textbook business American companies disestablished in 2014 2007 establishments in California 2014 mergers and acquisitions