Find eBook Readers Blog   Reading in the Digital Age

In the NY Times Motoko Rich reports that Macmillan’s new DynamicBooks software will allow professors to edit and customize digital textbooks to suit their classes.

Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.

Macmillan will start the program with 100 titles that students can purchase through CourseSmart, dynamicbooks.com or through college bookstores. The etextbook versions should be lower priced than the paper versions.  Rich cites one example: “Psychology” has a list price of $134.29 and sells for $122.73 at Barnes & Noble.  The DynamicBooks version will be $48.76.

The current model for paper textbooks has many students selling their used textbooks for about 50% of retail.  The stores then resale the used textbooks for about 75% of the retail price of a new copy.  This goes on for several years until a new edition is published.  In essence, many students are renting their paper textbooks.

The publishers get nothing from these used book sales and this is one reason that paper textbook prices are so high.  Publishers also control the market by periodically releasing new editions with differing page numbers, updated (hopefully) content, etc.  There are no used textbook sales with digital versions, and the publishers and authors get their cut from every sale.

DynamicBooks sounds really promising.  It shows that at least some at Macmillan “get it” about ebooks.  Similar principles apply to all of the other books we read.  If we buy a pbook we can give or loan it to a friend, sell it as used, or donate it to the library.  Neither the publisher nor the author get any revenue when we dispose of our books in such ways.  With ebooks all of this is gone.  If you recommend a good ebook to your friend, that person will most likely have to buy their own copy if they want to read it.

In addition, if publishers and authors were to make all of their backlist and out of print titles available in digital format they could enjoy the benefits of the long tail effect.   These older and sometimes esoteric titles may not sell as many units per title, but when added up together would surely amount to a substantial sum. 

Readers tend to read more with ereaders, in many cases a lot more.  Publishers should be able to make up the lower per title revenue from ebooks with increased sales volume, especially as more and more people move to reading digitally.   This is not to mention the cost savings of distributing ebooks; such as no warehousing, no remainders, etc.  We should not be expected to pay hardcover  prices for our ebooks, and probably not even paperback prices in most cases.

In any case, ebooks and digital reading devices are the future of reading, and the publishers need to figure out how to adapt and thrive with the new technology rather than worrying about whether ebooks are going to impact the sales of hardcovers – because yes they will have an impact.  Just as in the past other revolutionary publishing technology impacted the practitioners of the old ways.  Seen any scribes lately?

If the publishing industry does not adapt they are going to find themselves much less necessary as digital publishing and reading make it much easier for authors to self-publish. 

Possibly Related Posts:

• Apple brings etextbooks to iBooks on the iPad
• Chegg launches new eTextbook Reader
• CourseSmart launches etextbook Web app
• CourseSmart partners with 9 additional publishers
• Kno adds 3D and multimedia to etextbook app