Book publishers finally getting their digital acts together?
Summary: Not quite, but an interesting post on Ars Technica suggests that they might finally be turning a corner in terms of providing digital content, instead of relying on traditional paper publishing. Why do we care here in Ed Tech?
Not quite, but an interesting post on Ars Technica suggests that they might finally be turning a corner in terms of providing digital content, instead of relying on traditional paper publishing. Why do we care here in Ed Tech? Because paper publishing costs schools exorbitant sums in textbooks (and related repairs, damages, and maintenance), kills trees, and fills innumerable backpacks to overflowing, any move towards providing content digitally (and at reduced cost or via different pricing models) is a welcome change.
While the Ars post focuses on non-textbooks, it raises some more general points:
...whatever the limitations of the current plans, these are important experiments. Book publishers, like music labels, aren't stupid, and the ones we've talked to are acutely aware of their need to stay on top of digital developments. The book business, though far older than the recorded music business, is still lucky enough to have time on its side: no e-book reader currently offers a better reading experience than paper. But that could change (new readers are looking quite sharp), and if people do decide they like reading from screens after all, expect book publishers to face the same piracy problems that plague other industries...
The post specifically mentions efforts by Harper Collins to give away entire books online for free (in theory, enticing readers to actually buy more books because of the limited readability and DRM) and a model employed by Random House, in which sections of books are sold iTunes-style. Regardless of the models being explored, the fact that this slow-to-change industry is even flirting with electronic distribution is a harbinger of improvements to come for those of us who would rather deliver electronic materials to students.
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Talkback
Schools / Books / Learning
Cost of books? Perhaps a little respect for the written word should be implemented.
Notes? Do you remember looking through that box of old school papers that your parents kept in the attic for all those years? Or the notes in the margin of that text book you lent to your siblings for their math course?
Ollie
Half empty or half full?
Instead of looking at every copied book as a lost sale, they look at it the same way they do library copies or people lending books to friends: marketing. The bottom line is sales, and they're reliably up.
Pros/Cons of Books and eBooks...
* No batteries required
* Durable (get them wet, they dry out; drop one, still readable)
* Writable (can highlight, underline, add margin notes, doodle)
* Personalized (see writable)
* Highly portable (not tied to electricity)
* High readability (lower eye strain)
* Recyclable
Books - Cons:
* Get outdated quickly (can't be easily updated with new content)
* Long publication cycle
* High environmental cost (trees, mills, etc.)
* Costly (!) driven by high profit motive (for publisher)
* One-size fits all (CA & TX sales drive nationwide sales)
* Costly distribution model (physical shipping)
* Subject to deterioration over time (mold, mildew, bookworms, etc.)
eBooks and Readers - Pros:
* Relatively inexpensive distribution model
* Maintains relevance (updatable content)
* Shorter publication cycle
* Promise of "Open Standards" for formats and unlimited textbook options
eBooks and Readers - Cons:
* Requires electric power (batteries, plugin)
* Problematic to recycle readers
* High environmental cost for readers (rare metals, plastics, toxins in production and batteries, etc.)
* Potential high cost in reader technology (due to rapid technological change, high replacement costs, etc.)
* Schools may get locked into proprietary formats, limiting textbook options
* Publishers seek to maintain existing royalty and profit business models -- making eBook costs equivalent to paper texts.
The textbook publishing industry lives abject fear of the day when some high tech start-up company decides to enter the eBook content and distribution market, or worse for them, when an existing 1,000 lbs tech company get's serious about the education market (none really have since apple's initial major push in the 80's). In education, CONTENT is the royal family, the subject, and the kingdom... technology? Building blocks.
Time for a Change!
On the other hand, there are precious few textbook publishers and they are applying the lessons of OPEC to stifling the market for the ePublication of textbooks. This can be "fixed" in a number of ways. Almost every academician wants to publish. The university presses can publish ebooks directly. These can either be included in the price of thei courses (my favorite option), sold on memory cards or even downloaded from Amazon via EVDO.
Another person mentioned DRM, and I think it's important to address the appropriateness of digital rights management. For the past three to five CENTURIES people have been copying things that they have liked. It has been said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. However, rampant duplication & subsequent distribution theoretically robs conten t creators of the fruits of their labors, but does it really? Beyond that, does it in the case of a technical book with only a limited target audience?
My experience is that the vast majority of content piracy is perpetrated by people who either can not purchase, or who would never initially purchase the things they pirate. These people are categorically non-customers. Beginning as forgerers, this sort of piracy became popular with the making of reel-to-reel tapes from music albums. That cultural tradition has progressed into to making both bit-to-bit and compressed images of just about every type of digital content: data, texts, images, audio and video. Every method devised to thwart such piracy only results in increasingly clever countermeasures. Who is most obstructed by DRM? Criminals? No, it is legitimate customers! At the risk of being unflattering to acadmic authors, who except the target audience, wants to read a textbook. "Hey, I know, I'll read my vector graphics text from 1981." If you don't know why that's very stupid, let me explain. First, textbooks go out-of-date faster than discounted milk. Next, like most textbooks, that book is so BORING that I couldn't read more than 3-4 pages at a time before I had to go shoot some hoops or grab some coffee. Finally, as far as I know, there were EXACTLY 23 people (at my school) who were at all interested in that particular book--and we couldn't buy the book from the term before (because it had apparently curdled), nor could we sell it to students starting the next term (even though we were pretty sure it hadn't curdled over the Summer).
DRM is most appropriate when the content is very popular. Thus whatever is all the rage, or "hot" content deserves to be safeguarded as much as possible. However, there is no need for it in the textbook market, and there is a compelling argument to favor licensing entire classes and delivering the content online as both downloads and in formats suitable for reading online, on a disconnected laptop, or using a Kindle--or something like it.
RE: Book publishers finally getting their digital acts together?
I read the interveiw he gave for Newsweek and can't help to join the dots:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/108715
I doubt Harper Collins would have made such a move without this author's pressure.
Thumbs up for Pirate Coelho!