Hey!
After a nice week at in beautiful Meadow Lake Provincial Park, I’m back! Though the weather today feels more fall-ish then August probably should.
In the spirit of giving us something to keep our minds warm, I’d like to start broaching the topic of electronic textbooks.
We’ve spent a lot of time chatting about digital libraries, e-books, formats, etc., but what about the nitty gritty of actual digital textbooks use?
I stumbled upon an interesting blog/publication on this very topic, which makes the argument that digital textbook sales will make up nearly 14% of overall sales within 5 years, and may be up to 50% of the market by the end of the decade.
Even if those numbers as a little ambitious, the fact that digital textbooks are here to stay is abundantly clear!
But what exactly will that mean for schools, teachers, and students?
One of the benefits of digital textbooks would be the accessibility that they offer to all parties, as well as the ability to keep them up to date as newer editions come out. Furthermore, think of all the extra room on desks, cubbyholes, shelves, and classrooms without having them taken up by textbooks.
However, what about the more difficult problems of paying for the digital subscriptions?
It seems that the way the system is currently being designed is that schools/students buy digital licenses to books for a year or two at a time, and that gives them access and online support.
But is that really more cost efficient for schools? What about inner city or poorer districts that don’t have the money to continually update their licenses? Would it be smarter for them to simply purchase hard copies? With less hard-copies being printed though, would that raise the price for the paper versions though?
That doesn’t even begin to touch on the idea of copyright and intellectual properties? On the most basic level, think about photocopying and printing limitations. With more and more difficulty in making copies, does that make these digital textbooks any more accessible?
Finally, I can only imagine that the book producers will be in favor of this move, as they can generate nearly the same amount of revenue without overhead printing costs. Will that encourage them to add in features that allow students and schools to interact with their e-books, or will it be simply a digital port of a printed material? If the ability to interact (say for teachers to link YouTube, websites, media, and other digital forms of education directly into their students textbooks) with their digital texts is included, then this move could provide many new, and exciting ways to educate.
What do you think? Digital Textbooks are here, and the stream will soon turn into a flood. What type of features would you like to see in them? Does anything make you hesitate? Does anything in particular grab your imagination?
Ryan
Welcome back, Ryan, and thanks for the thoughtful post. I would add one thought from a completely different angle — from the author’s point of view. One thing e-books make possible is a new way of thinking about self-publishing. In the past, and maybe even still in some quarters, self-publishing was considered trivial — a place where bad writing went to die. But that’s not so true any more.
At the same time, conventional publishing kept getting more and more expensive, which led to fewer sales and smaller book lists. That meant a lot of good material wasn’t getting published. One of the responses was the emergence of publishing houses that produce “print on demand” options. They look just like regular publishers, but their agenda is to acquire the intellectual property rights to work, print copies as they are ordered, and charge a lot more for them. Often, they even require “print ready” versions of the books they publish. And they typically retain 90% of revenue from sales. The authors, by the way, get to have the name of a publishing house listed on their c.v.s, but I’m guessing that very few ever profit even a little bit from the sales of the books done this way.
But with e-books, it is relatively easy for authors to put together their own documents. And social media makes it easier and easier to reach potential audiences. Some will need to charge for their work; some will be able to offer their work for free. But I definitely sense a shift away from using conventional publishing houses for smaller run publications. I experimented with this approach, and an ebook I published myself, and offered as a free download by announcing it on Twitter and my blog, has out-performed any of the books I previously wrote with conventional publishers. And that’s after being available for only two months.
I think that’s where the disruptive part of this technology hides. Self-publication and distribution of work will grow, and I think it will cause conventional publishers to re-think their business models and costing around e-publishing. At least I hope so. We all know textbook prices have gotten out of hand.
Hi Ryan,
Did you see this article on South Korea?
http://bit.ly/o1OUnd
I know that my math text book this year (which was a print edition) came with access to the on-line e-book. However, the e-book wasn’t much more than a PDF version of the text book. They had access to a few more outside links and a couple videos.
I think the true e-text will be one rich with interactivity…..a hybrid between a book, and app, and a video player. I can only imagine how useful it would be for students to have a tablet that has their manipulatives right there!
Great post!
Jeff
Hey Ryan. I think e-books are one of the most interesting aspects of consumer technology, especially as people move away from kindles and sony readers that actually allowed people to read for long periods of time, towards tablets.
Initially, I remember being amazed that students would watch movies on their ipod touches. I hate watching movies on small screens – It is a vastly inferior experience. Then I started to think about what people do when they fly…
Regardless, the publishing industry’s insistence on carrying traditional paper copyright laws over into electric publishing is crazy. It is not going to work. Most of my students are able to find the book they lost online and download it to their hard drives. Digital books are going to make more literature free to all – but for most… it won’t be legal.
I worry about the idea of legality though.
As schools embrace electronic formats and books, there is also a duty to educate students about ‘legal’ and proper forms of citizenship and behavior. Unless the copyright rules change and become practical, is the choice really between free, illegal downloads vs. high-priced legal copies? If so, then I don’t think schools can, or SHOULD, encourage illegal downloading, even if it is easier and more cost effective.
This is of course not to even mention the idea of an entire classroom being full or illegally downloaded materials, or schools actually authorizing their staff to do so…