Archive for the ‘etextbooks’ tag
VitalSource Launches Bookshelf App for iPad & iPhone 1 comment
Leading etextbook provider VitalSource has announced a free app that lets students and faculty access their full etextbook content as well as notes and annotations from their iDevices.
The VitalSource Bookshelf app is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Notes and highlights made on other Bookshelf platforms are synced with the new iOS app.
Using the new VitalSource Bookshelf® iOS app, the full e-textbook, student notes and highlights are downloaded to the device, making it unnecessary to be connected to the Internet to access the full content. VitalSource Bookshelf is the only digital textbook platform providing synchronization across download, online and mobile delivery methods.
The VitalSource Bookshelf e-textbook app supports the full VitalSource library of titles, including popular higher education textbooks, study guides and classics on Apple’s popular iPad™, iPhone®, and iPod Touch® and other mobile devices.
VitalSource currently offers over 60,000 titles from top textbook publishers. The Bookshelf app is free at iTunes.
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Inkling Digital Textbook App no comments
Inkling has launched its iPad textbook reading app.
Inkling offers interactive textbooks with social collaboration and integrated multimedia. Students are able to buy individual chapters or entire books for less than the price of the print textbook.
"Inkling uses multitouch interactivity to create engaging learning experiences," said Matt MacInnis, Founder and CEO of Inkling. "Rather than replicating a book on a screen, Inkling puts 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction right at a student’s fingertips inside the textbook."
Students using the Inkling app can share their notes and highlights with each other and see comments from other students and professors alongside their own notes.
Inkling is a free download from iTunes.
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CourseSmart Partners with AccessText and Alternative Media Access Center to Make Digital Textbooks More Accessible no comments
CourseSmart,which makes claim to being the world’s largest digital course materials provider, announced today that it has formed a partnership with AccessText Network (ATN) and Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) to improve the accessibility of its digital textbooks.
ATN is a national organization that facilitates and supports the delivery of alternative electronic textbooks to the Disabled Student Services offices of colleges and universities throughout the US. AMAC is an initiative of the Georgia University System and works to improve services for students with print-related disabilities in the US.
CourseSmart will work with ATN and AMAC to optimize the digital versions of approximately 80 percent of its most popular etextbooks to increase their functionality with accessible technologies.
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Stanford University Engineering Library Replacing pBooks with eBooks no comments
After outgrowing its old space, 
the Stanford University Engineering Library will be housing its collection in a new library with a planned opening next month. In a Morning Edition segment, NPR reports that the new library will open with only 10,000 books on the shelves – a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old collection. The rest of the collection has been digitized.
When going through the library’s holdings to determine which books should be kept in a paper format on the shelves, librarians found that a majority of the books had not been taken down from the shelves in five years. The digitized editions also provide full text search, which makes it easier and faster for students to find needed information.
This is by no means the first library to convert much of their collection to digital; there have been several similar news stories, but this is probably one of the highest profile libraries to make the move. Don’t forget that Stanford was one of the first libraries that let Google scan its books.
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eReader News – 6/15/2010 no comments
Looking for a place to connect your Wi-Fi ereader or iPad while out on the road? Starting July 1, 2010 Starbucks will offer unlimited free Wi-Fi powered by AT&T that anyone can access with one click without a Starbucks card.
Starbucks has also partnered with Yahoo to create the Starbucks Digital Network which will offer digital content and a few business related tools such as a resume writing application. Free unrestricted access to various paid sites such as WSJ.com will also be available. Some of the content providers listed as participating in the launch of Starbucks Digital Network include iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and Zagat. The Starbucks Digital Network will debut in the fall and will be available only at US company operated Starbucks stores.
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Leading textbook retailer www.ecampus.comhas announced
that they have expanded their textbook rental program to include all major titles for the fall semester. Almost half a million titles are available to rent now.
When renting textbooks, students pay a much lower price for the title and then return it at the end of the semester or school year. This makes eCampus.com a more economical solution than the college bookstore.
Besides renting textbooks, eCampus.com also offers digital etextbooks and buys and sells used textbooks. The promo code JOCK can be use for a five percent discount on textbook rentals at eCampus.com – the coupon expires on July 15,2010.
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Although Amazon and Penguin reportedly have trouble on agreeing on some things such as the prices of ebooks, they have apparently been able to reach agreement as to who the winners are for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
The winner for the general fiction category is Patricia McArdle for her novel “Farishta,” which will be published by Riverhead books.
The winner for the young adult fiction category is Amy Ackley for her novel “Sign Language,” which will be published by Viking Children’s Books.
Both of these titles are available for pre-order at Amazon.
The winners were selected by tapping the wisdom of the crowd:
“Thousands of Amazon.com customers participated in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award by posting reviews and casting votes for the winners,” said Jeff Belle, vice president, U.S. books, Amazon. “The results of this year’s vote were the closest we’ve ever had, which is indicative of both the competitiveness of the entries and the exceptional work from our finalists.”
Both winners will receive a publishing contract from Penguin Group USA, which includes a $15,000 advance.
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Customizable Digital Textbooks & Some More Thoughts on Publishers vs eBooks 1 comment
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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Download Your Textbooks no comments
Back to school time is here again already, and with it come all of the related expenses. More and more textbooks are becoming available as digital downloads, and in many cases will be significantly cheaper than their paper versions, not to mention easier for you to carry around. Of course it would be great if
all digital textbooks were available for Kindle or other ebook readers. Unfortunately we are not quite there yet, but if the textbooks you need are not available on your ebook reader, they may be available in a digital version for your computer. There are an increasing number of online providers for etextbooks, and we will take a look at some of the largest:
CourseSmart
Offers over 7,000 digital textbooks for college, costing on average 50% less than the dead tree versions. Search capabilities, highlighting, note taking, and copy/paste are supported. You can also print out pages from CourseSmart’s etextbooks. Students can subscribe to either a downloadable version of an etext or an online version that can be accessed from any computer. Subscriptions last for 180, 360, or 540 days. Subscribers can also access their etextbooks via their iPhones and iPod Touch.
Textbooks.com
eTexts from Textbooks.com are downloaded to your personal computer and read using Adobe Digital Edition, Adobe Reader 7.1, or VitalSource Reader. Printing is allowed unless banned by the publisher. Subscriptions last for a minimum of 12 months.
iChapters
iChapters sells not only entire etextbooks, but also individual chapters. This can enable you to buy just the chapters that you need, or to pay as you go through the course. iChapters’ digital textbooks can be either viewed online or downloaded to your computer. You get two licenses for each title, so you can access from two different computers. Printing is allowed.
Update: iChapters is having a contest, you can enter to Win $1000 in Free Textbooks from iChapters.com. Expires August 26, 2009.
www.ecampus.com
This online seller of both paper versions and digital textbooks has over 4,000 etexts available. Titles are available in either an online or downloadable version. Subscription lasts for one or two semesters. eCampus also buys your used paper textbooks.
Cafescribe’s e-textbooks support note sharing and text to speech functions in addition to the other common features. Purchasers are granted a lifetime license to a title on up to three computers. You must use the company’s MyScribe reader software. Limited printing (up to 30%) is permitted, and the same limits apply to copy/paste. MyScribe is also available in a portable version that you can install on a USB key.
Textbookmedia.com
Digital textbooks from this provider are free, as they are supported by in-text advertising. You can also upgrade to ad-free versions. Free versions support only very limited printing capability; if printing out passages is a priority you may want to upgrade.
