The solution
In its 2020 Most Creative People profile, Fast Company said Cengage CEO Michael Hansen launched a subscription model for textbook financing in fall 2018. For $179.99 a year, students get access to all of the texts in the company's 22,000-book catalog. Hansen's stated problem was that there are virtually no markets in the world where course materials are as expensive as in the United States.
Fast Company wrote that the format was made possible by Cengage's history as a textbook publisher: Hansen took its deep education catalog online without ever having to pay for rights to new material. The service was branded Cengage Unlimited.
Why it worked
Cengage already owned or controlled the content, so putting the whole catalog in one plan did not add outside rights fees.
A single yearly price replaces a stack of per-course purchases.
A catalog this large means a student's courses are likely to be covered by the one subscription.
What can be applied
If your customers buy many items from your own catalog, a flat access fee can beat per-item pricing, provided you already hold the rights.
Aftermath
By March 2020, Cengage Unlimited had 2.6 million subscribers. Fast Company reported that the company estimates the service is present at every higher education institution in the country, has a bigger slice of the college textbook market than McGraw-Hill, and has saved students $200 million so far (company estimates as reported by Fast Company).
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