Apple iBooks Hangover

Today we all wake up with an Apple hangover from yesterday’s iBooks Education announcement. We all will now face a bombardment of commentary on whether it is good, bad or ugly. Opinion will be divided. Technical detail on file constructs will loose all but the die hard techie. The commercial rights and wrongs of the restrictions Apple have built in to contracts, their pricing vision and much more will be heatedly debated. Finally, we will face the reality that we are now entering a significant escalation in the Gorilla wars between the big four technology media reading platforms that stretches far past learning and is fundamentally coming down to which player is smartest in capturing our attention and creating the groundswell to lock out the others. The war win not be won by the smartest technology, the most open technology but by the smartest marketing and PR programme.

Last night we participated in a debate on Litopia After Dark. It was good and at a high level. It was also strange in that we all appeared to be struggling to form an opinion either for or against and found ourselves asking for more clarification. This is not a case of glass half full, versus half empty, it is about getting common understanding on a wide range of social, commercial and technological issues as they relate to the offer presented and forming an opinion based on what we know and not on what we don’t know. We recommend you to listen to the Litopia Broadcast.

Today we can look at the high level issues and then drills down to further clarify points.

Social
It is a given that learning can benefit enormously by universal access to technology to assist students of all ages to engage and develop. This is not just a US or even developed world issue and is truly global. However, at a time when spending everywhere is tight, we must ensure that choice prevails, in such a manner that it drives down cost and is inclusive and not divisive. Our thoughts are not about Apple versus Amazon but about Apple versus initiatives such as OLPC.

It is important that choice is available such that we avoid adding more fuel to the educational divide of those how can afford and those who have to learn without. Yes textbooks are expensive today, but replacing them with expensive technology that has an equally short shelf life, may not be the answer.

Finally, we must also consider who is the creator, who is the packager, who buys, who adapts and who users the content and context that supports learning. The value chain in one learning community or geography, doesn’t always prevail in another.

Authoring
We have long recognised that we now live in a world where we no longer listen, read and watch, but were we increasingly write, produce and repurpose, or ‘mix’ our own media. The iBooksAuthor toolkit looks to fit this bill perfectly and acts as one would expect. It enables multi media to be packaged to explodes and enriches today’s flat content.

It is reportedly aimed at publishers but is it really aimed at them, or to undermine them?

Irrespective of the technical issues of the tool, we see a potential groundswell of self publishing authors taking to the tool to create their works and enrich them. Is this restricted to education – no. Is it restricted to educationalists even within the learning environment – no. Some would suggest that it has the power to help further democratise writing.

Why would large publishers then be standing next to Apple and supporting the launch? Some would suggest that these same publishers are backing not one but many horses and spreading their bets widely. Will they shift from their other investments in the likes of Coursesmart or fledglings such as Inkling?

The challenge that publishing and learning now has is identifying who the author in the ibookauthor world is. Is it the traditional author, the publisher, the education board, the institutional library, the teacher, the parents ot groups, or the student? Some will say all of the above.

Publishers today add more value than just producing a textbook and paying the author. They ensure quality, conformance, provide supplemental learning aides and content for the different stakeholders. The more complex the work, the more collaborative the workflow and the wider the participation of creating and producing it. Does ibookauthor support collaborative works, or is it simply focused on the single creator?

Will textbooks have to be created as is today and then enriched after the event, or enriched at concept and flowed into varies renditions?

If we move to a ‘cut and paste’ world of self authoring, not just of text but media, who will act as the gatekeeper, who will ensure rights are not infringed, who will ensure ‘fair use’ doesn’t become open piracy? It is one thing to democratise creativity it is another to try and control abuse. Yesterday we talked about the lack of a rights registry tomorrow we may now have to accept plagiarism as a given.

Commercial
The commercials disclosed at the event and on Apple would appear to be divisive. They have plucked a price point of $14.99 out of the sky and whether we all agree or disagree, that like mud will stick. Does this include or exclude any tax and Apple’s 30% commission? How is the pie divided up and what is the expected cut for all parties? Some will suggest that it is aimed at increasing volume sales, but others will suggest that the market is finite and in some subjects areas, very finite. Some suggest that it will lead to more smaller works. So instead of one textbook, you could now have four richer ones. Will buying more twxtbooks still add up to the same cost to the student as the one textbook today and so defeat the argument of affordability.

There are many potential issues for ‘authors’ and publishers to consider in the terms published. Obviously these may not be applied to those Apple want on board, but we expect that there will be much written on this subject and it impact on whether the platform is open or closed commercially.

Technology
Some would talk about technology first, but It is interesting and fitting that we find ourselves bringing it up last.

Already the debates are raging across the internet as to the level of openness Apple has adopted with their new tool. Yes it is compliant with ePUB3, but with extensions and those would appear to be more in the CSS style sheet end and could prove a challenge to unlock for many. It make it a close format, merely hiding behind an open standard.

It would also appear that ibookauthor is free, open, but only available in Appleworld and on Apple devices. Good for Apple sales and domination, not so good for many others outside this community with sunk investment.

What we don’t understand today is how these new textbooks will work with the LMS environment and whether they will sit outside, inside or create new ones of their own called iBookstore?

For just one take on some technical aspects read this early paper by Baldur Bjarnason. There will be many more over the next few days.

Some have questioned the size of the files and the devices ability to accommodate them but these issues can be overcome. We await the next Apple launch.

There are many who recognise that all technology doors can be open and issues overcome. To many self publishers and small publishers, app developers etc these lock-ins may not matter as much as getting their creation published and in the one store.

We were asked last night what we thought the impact would be 5 years out.

We think:

• it will change self publishing of rich material, be it reference, learning, information etc.
• the take up in education will be slower that Apple would like as the beast is cumbersome and change is not overnight.
• Google, Amazon, Adobe, Facebook all have to respond and these will heavily impact the coming platform wars and not just in learning
• Governments and those holding the purse strings will decide some battles and with the budgets for content and technology starting to blurr in the US, this may be the start of a huge platform war

Today the dust is far from settled and some would suggest that anyone who is today either 100% for or against the initiative is not going to change their opinion whatever comes to light. The presentation and hype certainly drives a stake in the ground and made messages which are hard to disagree with, but it is not those but the Apple execution that we must focus on and decide if it works as delivered, needs to be adapted or doesn’t fly.

Apple Education Plus iPad?

Before his death Steve Jobs had already targeted textbooks as the next opportunity His idea was to hire the best textbook writers to new create digital versions that were complimentary and exploited the iPad. Importantly he wanted to make them free so they would obviate the US state adoption and certification process, which he thought was “corrupt.” In chapter 38 of his biography he says “ if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.”

Apple have now announced a special event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City on Jan. 19. It is widely reported that Apple will announce partnerships with textbook publishers aimed at positioning Apple at the heart of the multi billion dollar market. Apple will launch their new digital textbook business. We don’t know the plan, but expect that in a market dominated by a few large publishers such as Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, John Wiley & Sons and Macmillan that some will be looking for that Apple magic to rub off on just on their sales but their share values.

A report, "Simba Information's 2011 National Textbook Adoption Scorecard and 2012 Outlook," claims that almost all adoption states now are either promoting or permitting the inclusion of digital textbooks and other digital resources and importantly this includes hardware. It states that "Texas jettisoned the term textbook and replaced it with instructional materials, expanding the adoption process…Recent changes have also allowed districts to acquire hardware using the adoption funds." With respect to Florida it reports that the state’s Board of Education has overhauled its instructional materials adoption process and placed a greater emphasis on the approval and spending for digital materials, By the 2015-2016 school year…districts are required to spend at least 50% of their funding on digital materials."

If Apple were to secure a significant foothold in the market and deliver a seed change in how textbooks get adopted and bought they could well see significant revenues both in devices and in collecting 30% commission on each textbook sale.

So apart from the industry stalwarts such as Follett who are some of the leading digital textbook players today and can they adapt top any disruptive change?

CourseSmart.
The company was founded by a consortium of higher education textbook publishers to both offer digital inspection copies and full titles. It currently has iOS app for reading textbooks and with the backing of the major publishers is a force in the market. It is questionable whether this is used as the content repository and vehicle and so bolster its position further, or is sacrificed by its publishers and will now find itself competing with Apple.

Kno.
Kno has moved from being a device company to a platform and software one and is reported to have some 150,000 textbooks from 45 publishers. Kno textbooks are already viewable on Apple devices and the company was the top-downloaded educational app in Apple’s App Store at the end of last year .

Inkling.
Inkling has an iPad textbook app), which combines reading school texts with social and interactive ways to study with others with links to external and authoritative sources. McGraw-Hill and Pearson have both invested in Inkling.

Vitalsource.
Is part of Ingram Content Group also has its own app, with 60,000 digital textbook titles available for download to any iOS device. Vitalsource now has two million students using its platform worldwide and providing feedback to tell a publisher, “Nobody is reading Chapter 8,” as well as enabling enhanced multimedia applications.

Then there is the wonderfully branded site http://www.appletextbooks.com/ . A few challenges here we think.

The iBookstore hasn’t lived up to the expectations that many had and the Apple agency model is subject to a number of fair trading reviews. Will textbooks fair differently and make the difference and how will impact others already trading digital content?
We then have the Appleworld rule against running apps on iOS devices that direct the user away from Apple's ecosystem to buy competing products without using Apple e-commerce engines to handle the transaction. Apple has imposed a 30% tool both and made it harder to buy from the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others. However as demonstrated by Amazon’s latest ipad optimized website its relatively easy to provide a clean and touch-friendly for iPad-based browsing experience for readers without a 30% toll booth. With increasingly powerful Web-based solutions using technologies like HTML5, Apple won't be able to keep its ecosystem as closed as it might like.

Amazon’s touch-optimized Kindle Store for iPad allows readers to purchase or read Kindle e-book selections via Safari. The HTML5-based reading app is available via amazon.com/cloudreader and provides access to e-books through the browser, offline and online, with no downloading or installation required. Cloud Reader automatically syncs with other Kindle apps.

The AAP (American Association of Publishers) estimates that the college textbooks industry was worth $4.58 billion last year. Student Monitor, a private New Jersey student market research company claims that autumn etextbook acquisitions where up over 100% on spring and accounted for some 5% of sales. Simba Information, estimates that etextbooks will rise by 44.3% and generate $267.3 million US sales this year and they also estimate that, sales generated from state textbook adoption programs in Texas totaled $660 million in 2011.

However, we have to be also mindful of Job’s intent was not just to shake up the ‘corrupt’ textbook supply chain but to make them affordable if not free! Whatever the outcome Apple appears determined to shake the tree and collect the fruit.

Flat World Knowledge Gets Bertelsmann Investment

Bertlsmann are putting in $15m funding for Flat World Knowledge, a college textbook publisher seeking to commercialise “open source” educational material. We have watched Flat World Knowledge, since it first appeared on our radar in 2008 and we wrote about it,‘Flat Meets Round World Head On’ and the world of creative commons attribution licence (CCAL). We then wrote about it securing $8 million of investment and later in 2009 we covered 'Wired's' update on the company.

Flatworld pricing is based on an 'a la carte' model where online can be free, a PDF some $20 and a printed rendition of the same textbooks could cost up to $60. Flat World’s use of Creative Commons licenses also is not just to the student to allow unencumbered non-commercial use, but also the lecturers to add supplemental material.

Now $15million of investment funds from Bertelsmann and others such as Bessemer Venture Partners will enable FlatWorld to expand its offer to include the 125 most popular courses on college campuses. Flat World are very well positioned to exploit open digital textbooks with a model that significantly reduces costs for students whilst also giving professors greater control over the content.It also signals Bertelsmann’s intent to move into the world of education.

Kenya: Why Not Digital Textbooks?

It not often you see the third world demand for textbooks and potentially a OLPC program brought home so starkly as in an article in the Business Daily Prices of text books. The report is about a 12% hike in textbooks in Kenya and that the government has felt the need to step and impose a cap on the increase in order to protect consumers from arbitrary price increases by publishers on approved books.

The souring increased cost of printing paper is blamed for the increase with a 30% rise in 12 months from $970 to $1400 per 1,000 kilogrammes. Kenyan publishers’ sources of paper include Sweden, Germany and South Africa.

However some publishers have noted that an increase could damage sales and kept their increases to single figures.

The industry sells books worth over Sh3 billion per year, but its over-reliance on the government orders has denied players sales beyond text books.

The government has introduced free primary education, a subsidy of secondary education and made frequent changes of syllabus texts which have not only driven costs but also made the government the single biggest buyer of text books.

In light of souring costs and increasing demand it begs the question of why Kenya and similar counties aren’t embracing the OLPC program and their publishers doing it digitally.

eTextbooks Are Only Part of the eLearning

Textbooks are clearly becoming a digital battleground and it is understandable that the pressure to go digital is being driven and is effecting everyone from the creator to learner.

The learner now wants the convenience of digital and search, annotate, print, bookmark, copy and link to what they need and at a price they believe is right to them. They don’t necessarily want to buy a tome which is dead once they finish or an ebook they can’t sell or pass on after the course is finished. The teacher now wants to create customised content that is relevant to their students. They want aligned teachers notes and access to additional materials to help on certain courses. They want to be able to inspect and adopt appropriate titles that provide current information. The institutions want to ensure value for all and to join the dots across their life-cycle to ensure all get the appropriate material at the appropriate time and price. The bookstore wants to integrate the physical and digital student’s needs into a single market offer.

We could go onto the librarian, the examination board and assessors, the buying authorities, publishers, the author and etc

So how do we create the appropriate ecosystem to satisfy these needs and is it one or a number of environments that are transparently linked?



At the University of Notre Dame they are taking digital learning one step further and doing a study of eReaders. The working group of students are from a broad array of colleges and departments and are evaluating the ‘creation, distribution, consumption and usefulness of electronic course materials in an academic setting’.

Alternatively, Matt MacInnis, whoo an ex Apple man, has started his Inkling venture and taking individual titles and sexing them up to fully exploit the iPad features. So students have to buy an iPad, a laptop, a smartphone and then fork out $70 a book or $3 a chapter. Somehow it is hardly education for the masses today.

One the other hand we still have today's textbook and the likes of Follet, Campusbookrentals.com Barnes and Noble and others believe that they can reduce the cost to students by some 50% through a rental programme. They allow the student to do all those things they want to do, highlight, annotate, bookmark as long as they bring the book back in reasonable shape that's the end of the transaction. Barnes & Noble who offer their rental service to about 300 colleges and universities across the US are now including eTextbooks which can be read through free e-Reader programs.

Nice idea but students can also buy it today and sell it at the end of the year themselves. There are now many variations on this rental model. However it has to compete with the used textbooks marketplace which has always been a strong and a way in which students can cut the cost of their learning.

There are others who wish to cut out the middleman and sell direct such as Coursemart, a JV consortia of the five higher-education publishers with has some 14,000 college e-textbooks on its iPad platform. Then there is print on demand (POD) and the use of the campus stores as POD hub. Finally,there is Amazon, who believe that they already have a large slice of the new and used and ebook, student market.

The challenge would appear to be not etextbooks but to meet the demand for an holistic model that is inclusive and not exclusive and that joins the dots and connect of teaching, learning, research, engagement, service and personal activities. Today however, digital and physical need to coexist and are not mutually exclusive.

Kindle DX Fails The College Test

Last year Amazon went on a campaign to win over college campuses with to their Kindle DX. The big question is whether it passed or failed their exam? Jeff Bezos said at Pace University in New York that the 10” screen and storage capacity were especially suited for college students but they agree?.

They passed the reading test with 90% approval among MBA students at The University of Virginia, but failed the classroom study test with some 80 percent saying they would not recommend it. Others such as at the Princeton University and Portland-based Reed College, liked its long battery life, paper savings and portability, but importantly said no to the inability to scribble notes in the margins, highlight passages or fully appreciate colour charts and graphics.

A continual issues is the availability of digital content and devices that are able to meet student needs.

Amazon appears undaunted and have announced software upgrades to sort books into collections and zoom in on PDF documents. After all, the market is huge with a prize worth some $4.3 billion and a growing concern by both students and colleges on spending budgets and the cost of higher education. Market-research firm Student Monitor claim that the average student spent $659 on textbooks in 2009. The used book trade is significant and ironically one of the benefactors is Amazon.

Now the iPad steps up to the exam table with a number of colleges planning to test it. However its limited capabilities are likely to put it into the same result band as the Kindle and unless textbook prices fall the intial investment may prove a test to far.

Source: Seattle Times

2020 Vision: Textbooks Must Be Digital

A new California law, Senate Bill 48, says any individual or company selling textbooks to the University of California, California State University or private colleges must make them available electronically by 2020.

So California and Governor Arnie are talking colleges, universities as well as schools. The question now is whether others will follow and pass digital deadlines in law?

The date is interesting as by 2020 the digital world will be considerably different than what we see today.

Further Education's Digital Tectonic Plates

We were recently in Iceland which among other things is living proof that tectonic plates can collide, or pull apart and from it can come benefit. In Iceland’s case it is free energy. The tectonic plates between free and paid for Further Educational content is equally fraught and offer much for all, but some would suggest that we can’t wait for nature to take its course on this occasion.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has reported the findings of its ‘e-books for Further Education (FE)’ research to make 3000 e-books freely available to every college and sixth form in the UK. In the next 5 years, the project aims to enable all students in FE in the UK to access online course texts to support their studies.

The research studied UK student usage of 36 online textbooks at 127 universities during the period November 2007 to December 2008. In that time, 46,000 visits were made and more than 761,000 pages were viewed. More than 50,000 university staff and students were surveyed. The e-books on offer via the project were chosen by ballot system by colleges across the country, with more than 80,000 votes cast. It also compared print sales of the same textbooks during the period which fell during the print-sales-only period 18.7% and fell 13.7% during the subsequent free-access period.

The study recommends that publishers develop better e-text platforms, which could include removing digital rights management, making content available to plagiarism detection software vendors, and having e-books include and conform to ISBN standards. It claims that many students viewed the texts online, and did not download them even though downloading was an option. Most of the textbooks were scanned for content, not read completely, and the incidence of cutting and pasting information was high. This is very interesting as it would support the view that online is important and that online is used for reference and mashing of text. It would indicate that merely replicating the physical book as an ebook may be not what is required. This clearly presents many publishers with not a DRM issue but a rights issue as it suggests that it isn’t the content that needs protecting but the rights cleared to facilitate mash-ups which is a subtlety but different perspective.

JISC wish the new ebook titles to be available to students at anytime, anywhere which again raises some interesting issues. Colleges will also be able to build a digital library of e-books tailored to meet the needs of all its students and buy additional e-books at specially discounted prices to add to their collection. What is not clear to us is whether all the books will be made free under the same terms or will the additional ones be restricted?

It is hoped that the results will give publishers the confidence to release more e-books. We see both pluses and minuses here as there should be the realism that students with little discretion always buy what is required for their courses. However we note that they still want print and this would suggest that the Flat World Creative Commons approach would make sense. This suggests that there is an opportunity for superior product development and integration.

Details of how to subscribe to the online catalogue

Details of the e-books for FE project can be found at JISC

The Flat World Expands

Just under a year ago we wrote a long article about Flat World Knowledge, ‘Flat Meets Round World Head On’ and the world of creative commons attribution licence (CCAL). Flat World Knowledge is a new venture foundered by two very reputable publishers Jeff Shelstad and Eric Frank.

Then earlier this year we reported that Greenhill SAVP had invested $8m Series A financing in Flat World Knowledge.

Now Wired gives us a healthy update on this innovative company’s progress. It reports that Flat World now claim 40,000 college students at more than 400 colleges are going to be using their digital, DRM-free textbooks in the coming semester, up from their beta of 1,000 students in 30 colleges in the last semester.

Flatworld pricing is based on an 'a la carte' model where online can be free, a PDF some $20 and a printed rendition of the same textbooks could cost up to $60. Flat World’s use of Creative Commons licenses also is not just to the student to allow unencumbered non-commercial use, but also the lecturers to add supplemental material.

Flat World now are working on supporting the likes of the Sony e-book reader and Amazon Kindle and plan to use their most popular format the PDF to achieve this. It will be interesting to watch how the most widely supported digital format, PDF, promotes a DRM free textbook in a flat world.

Textbook Viewpoints

On one hand we have Seth Godin’s view on textbooks.

‘They are; expensive, don't take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight, are out of date and don't match the course,are far from engaging or inspirational and are incredibly impractical.’

‘Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online... Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.’

‘This industry deserves to die. It has extracted too much time and too much money and wasted too much potential. We can do better. A lot better’.



California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a program widely reported and that is intended to get public schools to use fewer textbooks and more online learning materials. However are his motives on the same lines as Godin’s? Maybe Arnie is trying to turn the planet green and sees the paper and process of textbooks wasteful? Maybe its all down to money and voters?

The aim is to get the state's 6 million public school students to use more online learning materials and saving millions of dollars a year in textbooks. The question is how much will the program cost and will the savings be greater than the cost. It’s interesting to note, that in the state that spawned Google, Apple and Facebook, the biggest beneficiaries may be the Silicon Valley companies that drive much of the state and will have to provide the infrastructure.

"We expect the first science and math books to be digital by this fall," Schwarzenegger said. "If we expand this to more textbooks, schools could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and that's hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to hire more teachers and to reduce class sizes."

Will Schwarzenegger's proposal merely increase disparities between students in poor schools and those in middle-class or wealthier districts or provide a level playing field for all?

Schwarzenegger has already billions of dollars from school budgets over the past two years and has proposed another $5.3 billion in education cuts next year cutting the textbooks and instructional materials from $419 million to $350 million last year.

One factor that could undermine the initiative is the extent of technology in California classrooms. Education Week gave the state a D-minus this year for having on average, just one computer for every four children. The online material is likely to be supplemental to the textbooks and will result initially in California still buying traditional books.

California's plans to drop traditional textbooks in favour of online material will no doubt get many plaudits but will it succeed in improving education, the budget or merely keep the Valley folk happy?

Digital Textbooks Are Only Part of The Solution

We read today in the Bookseller that ‘Amazon prepares for 'textbook e-reader wars'’. The story emulates from Evan Schnittman, vice-president global business development at Oxford University Press who claims that amazon had revealed the device early so it could stake out its territory before the academic market becomes home to the "textbook e-reader wars".

The reality is that there will be a battleground in all levels of education for what is a very lucrative prize, that of the device of choice for students of all ages and the sale of content to them. Will the solution be the same? It’s a hard call, but what is clear is that the device by itself will not be the answer. The device plus ebooks, in whatever format, is even not the answer. To everyone but the textbook publisher these are merely part of the answer.

Students require connectivity, reference, to be able to capture notes, bookmark, diaries, collate files, create documents, will probably not be restricted to text, or even greyscale. Therefore ask yourself as a student with limited disposable income, would you rather invest in a Kindle DX at $489 (£325) or more suitable devices that are not tied to content and a single business model and that can’t connect to all resources and can do more than download and store mere documents.

Ask these three basic questions to the students:
Do you own a iphone?
Do you own a kindle?
Do you own a laptop / netbook?
Next ask them if they don’t have all the above would they expect to buy one in the next 12months?

The King or Kindle may have new clothes but it’s the same underneath.

Another Day Another Kindle

We have been away on business whilst the Kindle 3 hit the market. The device was as expected and the reaction and pitch has been interesting to catch up on after the event:

Digital Demographics
Bowker, at a BISG's ‘Making Information Pay’ conference revealed demographic information that claimed that older readers are the biggest buyers of ebooks. The statement caused many industry thinkers to start to ponder about the attraction of large print, weight, ease of handling and much more perceptions. The reality is that older buyers are those that buy books full stop; they have more time, disposable income and much more. Is it surprising they are the ones buying ebooks – No? Some would say that it’s obvious that the grey market is the one with the largest opportunity and its somewhat condescending to find it a surprise.

Newsprint and magazines are going to go Kindle.
Newspapers may be going downhill but that doesn’t mean that the wave of large screen eInk devices have the answer. We now have PC news sites, smartphone apps and the ereader device. We know that Murdoch wants one, Hearst wants one and we assume the public want one, but the operative word may be one not three or four.
One important digital newspaper issue is how do readers want the news presented? Do they want it in alerts tuned to their personal preferences? Do they want it to look and feel like a paper, after all it has taken many years to perfect the user experience? Do they want it in summary with detail on request? Do they want ads or ads free? Do they want a fully interactive experience and animated experience or merely a captured textural one splattered with the odd greyscale image? Do they want colour?

Once we have addressed the format then there is the price or subscription issue? Then there is the issue about geography and getting the news delivered locally wherever you are in the world. We could go on...

Making the ereader bigger so it looks like a newspaper may not be the answer.

Textbooks are going to be Kindlebooks
Students are going to embrace the new Kindle. The logic appears to be that textbooks are too expensive so ebooks will take the market. So we expect the students to carry around a laptop or netbook, a Kindle and a smartphone? As we walk around the streets of Amsterdam this weekend we wonder who has smoked the most weed? Students require more than ebooks and they already have laptops and smartphones so why would they spend on a device that will give them nothing they don’t have today? Cheaper books have to be offset against the device cost. Students have to live and study with an open, connected campus world and will that fit with fortress Amazon? Princeton and other campus may adopt the device to drive their paperless dream but why not simply adopt a netbook and offer the student’s real choice. Some may say that its easy to create a news splash but living up to the logic can be hard.

Finally, the Kindle DX is priced at whopping $489, a higher price point than a Netbook.

Standards
The Kindle does not handle epub and the standard’s world will continue to argue that this the biggest weakness. We agree that an open standard is the best way but we also recognise the power and openness of Adobe’s other protected format Adobe eBook based on PDF. It may not offer everything that epub offers, but is supported by the same DRM services, ereader devices and is cheaper to produce. Amazon’s propriety format is either their Achilles heel or their trump card and until we see what others do over the summer, we believe that it remains difficult call for the independent.

Finally, we are disappointed that Amazon chooses to change the name as we were looking forward to reaching the K9 version in the future, but more on the DX brand later….

Digital Textbooks Move Forward

The Kansas City Star reports that Northwest Missouri State University students start their spring semester classes will be participating in a pilot electronic textbook program which began last semester with four classes and about 200 students. This spring, about 4,000 of the school’s 6,500 students will use electronic textbooks.
Northwest’s plan to eventually eliminate all bound textbooks makes it a leader in the change to digital textbooks. However, they state that they can only go as fast as publishers make the digital copy available and not all students are as comfortable with the electronic textbooks so students who want a traditional textbook could still get one.

Currently the university spends about $800,000 to maintain a student rental inventory of some 50,000 to 80,000 textbooks. A textbook-free campus would save the university about $400,000 a year.

This again raises the question of rental versus purchase and in a WiFi campus or permanently connected environment the need to download. Think of the information and feedback publishers would have available if they could see the text books student usage, annotations and bookmarks. There are many opportunities that digital brings over and above just replicating the physical copy and the challenge to many is to establish a strategy that is capable of evolving and not just following the rest.