Why Was CourseSmart Offloaded?

This week’s news that the publishing educational joint venture CourseSmart has been acquired by Ingram’s Content Group should be not a surprise, but raises some interesting questions about publisher's joint ventures.

Some six years ago whilst speaking at the National Association of College Stores (NACS)  conference in Minneapolis, I was drawn to a cluster of delegates who were busy taking notes and sat apart from the delegates. I spoke to them afterwards and discovered that they were all from CourseSmart and they were obviously sent to press the delegates’ flesh. On being asked what the CourseSmart service was and what it wanted to be when it grew up I found I got different answers. Maybe that is where their problems lay. Later there were several rumours that some members of the joint venture want to go their own way. I also remember presenting to an industry group in the UK who were looking for an alternative to CourseSmart, but many were being reined in to supporting it by their larger brothers and sisters in the US. It is interesting that some members of the venture spread their bets and also backed competitive services as well as their own offers.

The big question is why publisher digital joint ventures either wither or get passed on? Maybe they feel that they are not core business, or that they don’t have the skill base, or maybe they bleed cash? Recently we have seen ventures such as Bookish and Anobii fail. Unlike others CourseSmart had the perfect parentage, access to the content, potential direct to market sales channel, yet it moves on.

CourseSmart was formed in 2007 by Pearson, Macmillan, Cengage Learning, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson. It started off as a digital inspection service then quickly morphed into a providing digital textbooks in the higher education market and lately has offered its content and platform to a wider audience. It’s technology was driven be Pearson and some say that was probably the start of many of its internal challenges. Others will say that the base technology was restrictive and did not meet many of the market’s demands.  

In Ingram Content Group's Vital Source Technologies, Inc., it has probably found a good home and it clearly offers Ingram extended reach under the Vital Source platform as well as potential increased access to and opportunities with publisher digital distribution.

Bookish It May Be, But Is It Wise Dotcom?

In this new age of social networking we are constantly being reminded that books have always been shared, discussed and can provide a social hook. Because of this social aspect of books we all search to find that social platform and a big opportunity to join the dots and engage authors, readers, booksellers, reviewers, editors and anyone with something to say about books.

Many have tried and todate and it is fair to say none have succeeded. Amazon was first with their reviewer comments, Publisher’s have launched genre and author platforms, author signings have threatened to go virtual, those ‘like it’ thumbs up links now litter sites, in the UK Book Rabbit came up and went back down its hole and we have the social book site Copia, meandered around and wondering what it wants to be, the list goes on.

We now read that ‘Bookish’ is going to be the next big thing and will be where readers go to find their next book. Bookish believes that with the help of AOL and book publishers like Penguin, Simon & Schuster and the Hachette Book Group its going to change the social book network. According to their CEO Peter Lemgruber, ‘Nobody is more intimately familiar with the multitude of elements that make a book appealing than its publisher.’

Ten years ago the endorsement of AOL would have counted, but today AOL stands like Microsoft wondering what happened at their party and why all the guests appear to be leaving. As for publisher being the judge of book appeal, Lemgriber obviously doesn’t appreciate the gambling element of publishing and the fact that publishers publish books and retail sells them.

The mystery as to what will work and what will merely create noise and fail is as complex as the book market that they are trying to engage. Many readers can see through the ‘cluster bombing’ of marketing spend and inventory to make a best seller, celebrities still work but often can’t engage through their text and importantly people’s reading habits are often very eclectic and hard to pigeon hole.

Some say that reading others views really helps. However, this may be like reading comments about a hotel on a travel web site, a video clip on YouTube etc - it all helps qualify but are often not necessarily always trusted, have anything to say, or are authoritative.

Heavy readers probably already have their sources to help them select their next read. Perhaps those who read less often will never feel the urge to invest the time to engage in a ‘bookish’ place until their reading habit grows to need it.

Perhaps the challenge remains to get more people to read and read more.