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The following article was published February 21, 2012 by fivecentnickel.com.

Teens and Money


Written by Jeffrey Steele
The last 10 to 15 years have seen unprecedented numbers of Americans doing wacky things with their money, and paying big time for their mistakes.

About 12 years ago, for instance, a lot of folks bought into the tech bubble just before it became a tech wreck. Two years later, having seen their nesteggs decimated by the stock market plunge after dot.com went dot.bomb, many sold out of stocks in the trough, only to watch the markets suddenly rocket higher. Then, having licked their wounds and assembled a bit of cash, many couldn’t resist buying into housing at the top of that bubble, only to be wiped out again.

But why should such miscues be any surprise here in the good ol’ United States, where personal finance seems the most taboo of scholastic subjects?

I mean, this is a land where in our 12 years of elementary, middle, and high school, we learn obscure tidbits about the Magna Carta, far-out geometric algorithms, factoids about the flora and fauna of Tanzania, and other insights we’ll never use again, but are shut out of any kind of lessons on the one thing we’ll need to do every minute of the rest of our lives, which is manage money.

Those Awkward Years

No wonder the only group more prone to bonehead cash maneuvers than American adults is American teens. The University of California reported a few years ago that American teens were spending at about a $179 billion annual clip. Yet, when given a national standardized money management test, high school seniors tallied an average grade of 48.3 percent, a failing score.

“High school seniors have little knowledge of money management, savings, investments, income and spending,” the UC system reported. “A vast majority of students 16 to 22 have never taken a class in personal finance, with two-thirds admitting they could benefit from more money management lessons. Alarmingly, nine percent were rolling over credit card debt each month.”

Today, only nine states have any type of program to assess students’ financial literacy, and fewer than one in five teachers feels he or she is equipped to teach classes in financial literacy, according to a recent study by the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability.

That report found financial literacy on the part of both the population as a whole and on the part of teens was low, which may have to do with increasing legions of folks being “unbanked,” and having higher levels of indebtedness, as well as lower rates of wealth accumulation and financial planning.

I can certainly attest from personal experience to the comparative lack of personal financial skills by American teens. Why, I recall that as a teen-ager, my own main interest in life was blowing as much money as possible on eight-track tapes.

And this was in 2004.

New Initiative Needed

Just kidding, of course. But it’s clear we need a new initiative to tackle teen financial illiteracy. And it’s being provided by Amsco School Publications, Inc., a 75-year-old New York City-based family-owned company that publishes textbooks and supplementary materials for students in grades 7 through 12.

Amsco School Publications has recently created Personal Finance, a textbook designed to teach American teens what they need to know to live fiscally responsible lives. That includes setting financial goals, researching and planning careers, understanding banks, knowing where to save and invest, using credit wisely, and comprehending why insurance is needed, even at young ages.

I recently had a chance to talk to Amsco’s vice president of sales and marketing Irene Rubin, and asked her why her company decided to tackle teen literacy. “We knew there’s a problem, because of the credit card debt

Over the past few months, Amsco School Publications, Inc. has been mentioned in several national publications, blogs, and on educational Web sites. We think that our blog followers might be interesting to see what is being said about us.

E-Commerce News.com January 24, 2012
The iBooks Profitability Puzzle
By Erika Morphy
MacNewsWorld Part of the ECT News Network 01/24/12 5:00 AM PT

Apple's new iBooks textbook market saw lots of activity over the weekend as users downloaded 350,000 copies of books, according to Global Equities Research. If iBooks catches on in a big way, it'll certainly be profitable to Apple. But whether it will be a good deal for authors and publishers has yet to be determined.

Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iBooks textbook initiative, launched just last week, has clearly struck a chord in the market. Ditto its accompanying textbook authoring tool, iBooks Author. Both have taken off at a significant pace, according to a report by Global Equities Research.

More than 350,000 textbooks have been downloaded via iBooks over the past three days. In addition, there have been more than 90,000 iBook Author downloads. iBook Author is a free authoring tool to create textbooks for Apple iBooks.

A Big Impact
The numbers seem to indicate many students and educators at least interested in seeing how Apple wants to break into the market. However, as the ramifications of the textbook store and authoring tool become clearer, some industry observers are having second thoughts as to whether this would be a good thing.

For starters, textbook publishers could find their margins squeezed, perhaps uncomfortably so. As Global Equities notes in its report, more than 50 percent of textbook industry revenues come from the sales of introductory books.

Then there is the lock-in for authors that use Apple's authoring tool. Migrating to other platforms is simply not an option, at least with this current platform.

Global Equities Analysis
Global Equities' initial take on how publishers will fare in the system is that they will in fact make more money selling an iBook textbook priced at US$14.99 versus a traditional printed textbook priced at $125.

That is because 50 percent of the textbook industry consists of used books, which deliver zero revenues to publishers. Also, the textbook supply chain is a complicated one, consisting of distributor, wholesaler, retailer and finally student. At each step the markup is between 8 percent to 15 percent, for a total of between 33 percent to 35 percent -- excluding actual distribution costs.
Conversely, the cost of an iBook production is 80 percent less than a print product. Global Equities declined to provide further details.

Some publishes of textbooks, though, disagree with Global Equities' assumptions, not to mention its math. Larry Beller, president of Amsco School Publications, told MacNewsWorld the firm has been offering its own e-books for roughly a year and a half. Pricing for the two products -- print and e-book -- must remain roughly the same in order to provide revenues for the authors, he said, which are compensated differently than authors of fiction or non-fiction books.

"With Apple's platform coming out we will have to rethink some of the numbers, but it won't be a significant difference. It can't be." He added that there is still an important print market for college students -- and especially elementary and high school students -- that won't go away even if this platform becomes popular.

An iOS-Only Tool
For others, the authoring tool is the one that raises the most concern. For instance, writers who use iBooks Author to write books they intend to sell may only distribute them through Apple's services.

"There is a lot about this tool that I don't think authors will realize at first," Br