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Down but not out: Paper textbooks can survive
April 2, 2010, Friday
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MANY educators are pointing to Apple's recently announced iPad as the prototype for an e-reader that will be able to hold all the textbooks a student needs.
Its color touch-screen, interactive-video capability and virtual keyboard, they say, give it greater potential for textbook users than monochrome readers such as Amazon's Kindle.
Apple has been quiet about its designs on the textbook business since unveiling its new device. Hewlett-Packard and Dell have also announced portable tablet computers, and Microsoft is rumored to be developing a two-screen model.
While some students may be using notebooks or their more portable cousins, netbooks, to read textbooks, some experts predict that within the next 10 years, most college students in the United States - and many high-school and elementary-school students as well - will probably be reading course materials on an electronic device instead of in a paper book.
And that will have a broad impact on students and teachers, not to mention the US$9.9 billion textbook-publishing business. If this is, indeed, the future of textbook publishing, a key question remains: Is it economically sustainable?
Almost every industry - from travel agencies to newspapers - that has moved to a digital model has seen its profits decimated and some existing participants bankrupted.
Textbook "publishers are aware that their current model is doomed," says Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI).
Adds WIMI co-director Eric Bradlow: "It's not just that the bound-dead-tree is a dead model. (It's that publishers) will have less monopoly power." Assuming the cost of production goes down, "market forces suggest prices would come down" as well.
Bradlow also predicts there will be new revenue models for publishers, including timely ads and electronic coupons.
For example, when students finish a chapter and show mastery by passing a self-assessment quiz, an ad could pop up suggesting they reward themselves with a run to the local Ben & Jerry's.
Frank Lyman, executive vice president of online-text publisher CourseSmart, says Apple's tablet "is likely to boost demand for digital textbooks because it will capture the imagination of the next group of students." Within days of the iPad announcement, a group of major educational publishers announced they would use technology developed by ScrollMotion, a New York-based content technology company, to transfer textbooks to the iPad.
Yet while students eagerly anticipate lower costs and lighter backpacks, teachers remain wary and some publishers still question the model. It isn't clear that students are ready to study from an e-textbook. As Stephen Kobrin, editor of Wharton School Publishing, notes: "We publish all our course packs digitally. When I ask students how they read them, they say they print them out."
Indeed, about 88 percent of college students own laptops, but so far, few of them download electronic textbooks, even though they could save money.
However, electronic readers have shaken up the market for fiction and non-fiction books, known in the industry as "trade books." Trade books accounted for US$8.1 billion in US sales in 2008, 18 percent less than the textbook market.
E-readers attract some of the book industry's best customers, who regret the demise of bookstores but like the idea of US$10 titles that can be downloaded at will and don't crowd overburdened bookshelves.
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. All rights reserved. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
Its color touch-screen, interactive-video capability and virtual keyboard, they say, give it greater potential for textbook users than monochrome readers such as Amazon's Kindle.
Apple has been quiet about its designs on the textbook business since unveiling its new device. Hewlett-Packard and Dell have also announced portable tablet computers, and Microsoft is rumored to be developing a two-screen model.
While some students may be using notebooks or their more portable cousins, netbooks, to read textbooks, some experts predict that within the next 10 years, most college students in the United States - and many high-school and elementary-school students as well - will probably be reading course materials on an electronic device instead of in a paper book.
And that will have a broad impact on students and teachers, not to mention the US$9.9 billion textbook-publishing business. If this is, indeed, the future of textbook publishing, a key question remains: Is it economically sustainable?
Almost every industry - from travel agencies to newspapers - that has moved to a digital model has seen its profits decimated and some existing participants bankrupted.
Textbook "publishers are aware that their current model is doomed," says Peter Fader, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI).
Adds WIMI co-director Eric Bradlow: "It's not just that the bound-dead-tree is a dead model. (It's that publishers) will have less monopoly power." Assuming the cost of production goes down, "market forces suggest prices would come down" as well.
Bradlow also predicts there will be new revenue models for publishers, including timely ads and electronic coupons.
For example, when students finish a chapter and show mastery by passing a self-assessment quiz, an ad could pop up suggesting they reward themselves with a run to the local Ben & Jerry's.
Frank Lyman, executive vice president of online-text publisher CourseSmart, says Apple's tablet "is likely to boost demand for digital textbooks because it will capture the imagination of the next group of students." Within days of the iPad announcement, a group of major educational publishers announced they would use technology developed by ScrollMotion, a New York-based content technology company, to transfer textbooks to the iPad.
Yet while students eagerly anticipate lower costs and lighter backpacks, teachers remain wary and some publishers still question the model. It isn't clear that students are ready to study from an e-textbook. As Stephen Kobrin, editor of Wharton School Publishing, notes: "We publish all our course packs digitally. When I ask students how they read them, they say they print them out."
Indeed, about 88 percent of college students own laptops, but so far, few of them download electronic textbooks, even though they could save money.
However, electronic readers have shaken up the market for fiction and non-fiction books, known in the industry as "trade books." Trade books accounted for US$8.1 billion in US sales in 2008, 18 percent less than the textbook market.
E-readers attract some of the book industry's best customers, who regret the demise of bookstores but like the idea of US$10 titles that can be downloaded at will and don't crowd overburdened bookshelves.
(Reproduced with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. All rights reserved. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
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