TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘textbooks’ Category

By Joanna

So many articles on the potential for e-textbooks! Chris Meadows posted earlier about the shortcomings of the Kindle DX at Virginia University, for example. Not so great with the PDFs, and better suited for reading fiction. So…what if reading fiction is part of your degree? Can an ebook reader replace a bagful of textbooks then? I did some thinking about my own degree in English Language and Literature (1996-2000) and I think that if ebooks had been even half as big back then, I would have saved a fortune!
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By Chris Meadows

The Financial Times reports on the experience of University of Virginia students in the Darden School of Business, who were issued Kindle DXes as part of a pilot program to see whether they could successfully replace paper textbooks. (Note: The Financial Times has a paywall; if you cannot view the article, search “No substitute for a paper read” in Google News.)

It turns out that for most students, the answer is “no”: although most agree they make great personal reading devices, almost 3/4 of the 63 students participating in the project said they would not recommend the device to an incoming student for use in school work.

For reading fiction, they work well, but the lack of color and zooming options for PDFs mean that they can be problematic for reading textbooks. It is also much harder to take notes than with a pencil or computer.

However, the college’s professors say they are still working on converting their course materials to e-book formats, and feel that the iPad might correct some of the deficiencies the students noted in the Kindle DX.

By Paul Biba

From a press release I received the other day. When students register for courses, NYU Bookstores emails them links to the required texts to signal the availability of the books on the CaféScribe eBook platform, making it simple for the student to opt for the digital versions. With CaféScribe, no additional eReader is required to access the eBook, and most titles can be downloaded to multiple computers.

Digital textbooks represent less than five percent of college-store textbook sales but could reach 10 to 15 percent by 2012, according to the National Association of College Stores.

“We expect digital textbook use to grow as fast as the title inventories can,” says Phil Christopher, director of NYU Bookstores. “The technology is in place, the books are highly interactive, and students own powerful portable devices. Moreover, traditional textbook costs are rising, and students are quite comfortable with searching, shopping and learning online.”

By Chris Meadows

Fellow NAPCO blog Appletell links to a story on iPadInsider (which in turn links to a story on Paid Content) which offers a first look at what “e-books” might look like on the iPad, courtesy of Penguin. I quotate “e-books” because I don’t think I would necessarily call what Penguin had to display “e-books” in the traditional sense.

Penguin Group’s CEO John Makinson had some interesting things to say at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference in London:

“We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.”

The accompanying video shows a number of so-called “e-books”: interactive children’s books which seem to be the next generation of those battery-powered books where you press shapes to make noises, a medical textbook including video of a beating heart, and a novel, Vampire Academy, with a link to an on-line chat community where readers can talk to other fans and “vote for who is the hottest vampire.”

There is also a travel guide with itinerary-creation tools and GPS map, and Starfinder which seems to be a sort of “augmented reality” app you hold up to the sky and it uses the built-in GPS and compass to indicate what constellations you’re looking at.

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By Chris Meadows

Steve Jobs was seen attending the Academy Awards last night (his second company Pixar’s movie Up won Best Animated Feature and Best Score), and the first TV commercial for the iPad was screened twice over the course of the show. iBooks was a fairly large part of the commercial’s focus.

A decent commercial, though I couldn’t help but notice the clip from Star Trek during part of a montage of screenshots and images was in full-frame and looked rather cramped.

Speaking of the iPad, CNet has an iPad FAQ that sums up what is generally known about the device. A good summary, though not much in the way of new information.

And speaking of FAQs, here’s a story I found on Nate’s Ebook News: Educause, a thinktank dedicated to “the intelligent use of information technology” in education, has come out with the latest in a series of articles called “7 Things You Should Know About…” The subject of this article is e-book readers (PDF download).

It’s a good basic summary of e-books in education, focusing largely on their utility for holding college textbooks, and their advantages and disadvantages compared to paper books.

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By Paul Biba

John Warren; Eric Frank – Flatworld; Frank Lyman – Coresmart; Nicholas Smith – Agile Mind; Neeru Khosla – CK12 Founcation

Flatworld: open access textbooks but still able to generate sustainable revenue
CK12: doing same thing but completely in K to 12 market. Providing online services and developed online reader
Coresmart: Many textbooks now available in digital format. 10,000 etextbook titles on their site.
Agile Mind: now can marry instructional concepts and multimedia.

How do digital textbooks solve problem of educating student; online books give more access and lowers price point. Hard for teacher/student to get “real time” knowledge of what’s relevant to student and real world. Hopefully etextbooks will be able to do this. Marriage of content, pedagogy and curriculum. Digital course materials enable delivery of content to every student. Education system broken and etextbooks allow customized content that speaks to who the child is and where the child is at any particular moment. Allows personalization by teacher and the integration of third party content.

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By Paul Biba

Speaker is Peter Collingridge of Enhanced Editions. Published The Death of Buddy Monroe. Came from a background of publishing, web page designing and film production. Value of books driven down by retailers and impact of digital has been very small. Want to make digital innovations to increase value of books. Sit between developer, consultancy and marketing house.

UK publishing houses slow to uptake on the iPhone. They said they were not publishing houses. E-ink devices too limited. iPhone has the ability. Had to be a premium publisher to get value back into the book. Needed a hybridized book for a hybrid device.

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By Chris Meadows

Earlier today, I talked about modifying e-books to correct mistakes not caught before publication. But there is another reason to modify e-books, and this one practical rather than theoretical.

College instructors often find that the commercially-available textbooks are not the best fit for their classes. For the most part, they make do by choosing specific reading assignments and passing out hand-outs or other supplementary material.

The New York Times reported yesterday on an electronic textbook initiative Macmillan is introducing. Called DynamicBooks, this program will let professors customize e-textbooks to be better-suited to their classes. Not only can they make large changes, they can change or remove anything, right down to paragraphs.

There have been a number of customized print textbook initiatives before, but Dynabooks is the first that allows such fine-grained changes.

“Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want,” said Brian Napack, president of Macmillan. “And we don’t even look at it.”

And the e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional textbooks, too; one title is priced at $134 for the standard print edition but only $49 for the e-book. Macmillan’s senior vice president for digital content, Fritz Foy, says outright that this is because they cannot be resold used the way printed textbooks can.

(Imagine that! Someone from Macmillan saying that e-books—or at least a certain kind of e-books—should be significantly cheaper than the print version!)

DynamicBooks can currently be read on-line or downloaded for use on laptops or iPhones. The general manager of DynamicBooks said they were negotiating with Apple on iPad versions.

By Chris Meadows

Now we know what McGraw-Hill’s CEO was talking about when he leaked that the iPad existed and would support his company’s textbooks. As mentioned by Engadget, the Wall Street Journal reports that a number of textbook publishers including McGraw-Hill are partnering with e-book app company ScrollMotion to put their content on the iPad.

(We previously reported on ScrollMotion’s appbook format, and McGraw-Hill and ScrollMotion teaming up to put content on the iPhone.)

The Journal suggested that possible use in schools might have been one of the considerations during the iPad’s development stages. However, it will face competition from other readers and especially the cheaper netbooks.

In any event, if Apple is not objecting to these ScrollMotion e-textbooks, it certainly provides another reason to hope and expect that Apple will allow Fictionwise’s eReader, Stanza, the Kindle Reader, and other such e-book apps and their associated storefronts onto the iPad as well.

By Chris Meadows

Per MacRumors, the CEO of McGraw-Hill has let a few interesting factoids slip about the new Apple tablet, starting at about 2:50 in the video below the jump. Here is the transcript:

Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow (Wednesday) on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going to be able to do now—we have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format on that one. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.

Does this mean that students who only have iPhones or iPod Touches can also snag the textbooks for their devices? And will they be reasonably priced? It will be interesting to find out.

And as a reminder, there are plenty of sites planning to liveblog the event starting tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern). I will probably follow Ars Technica’s.

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By Paul Biba

CourseSmart, one of the e-textbook sellers, reported a 400% increase in 2009 sales.

According to the National Association of College Stores about 42% of students have either purchased or at least seen an e-textbook. This is up 24 percentage points from 2007. The Association is predicting that 10 to 15% of college-store textbook sales could be digital by 2012. This is up from 2 to 3% now.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group surveyed the cost of buying 50 commonly assigned new or used textbooks versus e-textbooks. The cost of buying an e-textbook was on average the same as a hard copy sold back to the bookstore and twice the cost of a used copy sold back to the bookstore.

More details here.

By Chris Meadows

Textbooks are often upheld as an area where e-books can do a great deal of good, in terms of both saving students money, and saving wear and tear on students’ backs from lugging heavy texts around. TeleRead has covered a number of initiatives related to e-textbooks already.

Now BoingBoing guestblogger Andrea James looks at why the textbook industry is the way it is, summarizing an earlier report to Congress (PDF) on the matter.

James (and the report she cites) compares the situation to doctors’ relationship to prescription pharmaceutical companies, noting that it is one of the only other markets to exist where one party chooses the product but another party pays.

The issue is not a simple one. It turns out that there are a number of factors contributing to the situation on the parts of faculty, institutions, publishers and booksellers, and students.

And e-books may not be the perfect solution some believe. Writes James:

E-books are rapidly emerging as a viable option for reducing costs, but DRM makes reselling a big question mark from the consumer POV. If you buy a hardcopy used textbook for $100 and sell it back for $50, that’s the same final cost as a non-transferable $50 e-book with DRM.

James mentions several possible solutions, including teaching the same editions longer, establishing nonprofit bookstores and text rental systems, and patronizing the Creative Commons. She also links to a number of Creative Commons text sources, such as Wikibooks and Flat World Knowledge (which we have mentioned before).