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Customizable Digital Textbooks & Some More Thoughts on Publishers vs eBooks

Richard — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:01:22 +0000

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.

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enTourage eDGe eReader/Netbook

Richard — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:01:13 +0000

Entourage has an interesting device they are calling the eDGe (somebody really needs to get ereader names under control), which is supposed to be available in February 2010.

As you can see from the photo, it is half netbook and half ereader.

The netbook has internet browsing, can play movies and lets you view pictures from books you are reading on the ereader in color. It has a 10 inch screen and also comes with a video camera and audio recorder. Wi –Fi is built-in, but 3G requires an optional EVDO or HSDPA modem. There is a virtual keypad, but BlueTooth is also included, so you could add an external keypad. There is an SD card slot and you can also use a USB flash drive. The eDGe is based on Google’s Android. Battery life is not that great, but the battery is removable so you could carry a spare.

The ereader has a 9.7 inch e-ink screen with Wacom tablet technology. This gives you a stylus based touchscreen without glare issues. There appears to be a robust set of study tools including annotations and freehand drawing, etc. Your are also able to email your notes and journals to others.

Currently only ePub and PDF are supported. Entourage says they will have their own ebook store, but support for Adobe Digital Editions would add access to DRM’ed content.

Obviously at 2.5 lbs the eDGe would not be good for reading in bed, or for carrying around in your pocket, and all the bells and whistles the eDGe comes with are not cheap. The eDGe will sell for $490.

What interests me is that Entourage was able to put together a package like this for the same price as the Kindle DX. And if you just look at the ereader half of the eDGe equation it is pretty impressive. Full on study tools like the eDGe’s ereader has are what are needed in order to be embraced by students in the classroom. If Amazon is serious about being accepted in schools and used for etextbooks the DX needs to have features like this. And with Amazon’s much larger resources and sales volume they should be able to bring it to us at an acceptable price.

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eBook Readers and Textbooks

Richard — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:21:38 +0000

One major path to wider implementation and use of ebook readers will be their use for reading textbooks, but are the current devices up to the task?

In May of this year, When Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle DX, one of his focuses was on textbooks; which this new, larger addition to the Kindle family should be better suited for than it’s smaller sibling, the Kindle 2. Definitely the screen shots of the Kindle DX displaying diagrams are looking good. “We’re going to get students with smaller backpacks, less load”, he said. He also announced five colleges and universities that will be trying out the Kindle DX in the upcoming fall session: Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College, and University of Virginia.

Mr. Bezos also announced that Amazon has reached agreements with three of the leading textbook publishers: Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley.

Some pilot programs at universities have met mixed results. In several cases, students requested print textbooks after becoming frustrated with the digital textbook. Most of the problems seem to arise from navigational problems. Results so far would seem to indicate that additional features are needed on the devices before the use of ebook readers for reading textbooks can really take off. Advanced search functions, annotations (including shared annotations), and reliable multiple bookmarking functionality for example. And wouldn’t it be great to have easy access to Wikipedia! Another problem is mismatched pagination between users of printed and e versions of books. And finally, of course, color would be much better for those anatomical drawings! Looks like we’ve still got a ways to go. Certainly the Kindle DX is currently best of breed when it comes to digital textbooks; it does include many of the features necessary. It will be interesting to see how well the device is accepted by the students in the trials this fall.