Jobs Wanted to Transform Book Industry

Steve Jobs' new biography talks about how Mr. Jobs wanted to transform the textbook industry, according to this NY Times article.  The story talks about how Mr. Jobs met with the major players in the publishing industry to discuss how publishers could bypass the costly process of state certification of textbooks for K-12 if books were published on the iPad.  Mr. Jobs is quoted as saying, “ We can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.”  The idea, according to the biographer,  was to employ textbook writers to develop digital versions of their textbooks on the iPad.

In some ways, this sounds much like the type of work that Inkling is doing -- working with some of the top textbook publishers and taking a number of top textbook titles and moving them into the Inkling platform.  That platform at least initially is mostly focused on delivering its content to the iPad environment.  Parts of the business model within Inkling, and how they source some aspects of development, are quite interesting.  Seeing some of Steve Jobs' vision here play out within Inkling is not a big leap, as the CEO of Inkling, Matt McInnis, is a former Apple employee. 

Such developments should again give college stores pause.  The stores have value to provide to these transactions, but how do they become integrated into the new channel for content distribution? 

When technology trends (and textbooks) collide...

There have been a couple interesting studies out lately involving textbooks and tablets. A classic collision of technology trends as mobile devices and digital content converge among college students.

A few weeks ago we wrote about the study by the Pearson Foundation. Among some of the interesting quotes:

[W]hile 55 percent of students still prefer print over digital textbooks, among the 7 percent of students who own tablets devices like iPads, 73 percent prefer digital textbooks. With 70 percent of college students interested in owning a tablet, and 15 percent saying they plan to buy one in the next six months, the survey suggests that there may be a coming rise in the e-textbook market.

These findings are interesting on several points. First is the declining preference among students for print over digital -- dropping from 75% (widely found in a number of studies) down to 55% in the past 6 months. However, the preference of print over digital more than flips when you look at students with a tablet device -- with 73% of those students prefering digital to print.

Unless one wants to believe that this is just an abberation among early adopters, this week, a new study conducted at Abilene Christian University appeared in Campus Technology. Independent from the prior study, this study found similar preference for digital over print even among individuals exposed to a tablet for as little as three weeks. An interesting quote from this piece:

“After trying an iPad for a short period—about three weeks—three out of four college freshmen said they’d be willing to purchase an Apple iPad personally if at least half of the textbooks they used during their college career were available digitally.”

The article goes on to discuss the barriers to digital textbook adoption. Among top reasons they note lack of inventory, the cost of digital, and the need for truly media rich content. The first and last are on our list of factors. The second surprised me, as the physical print and distribution costs are not a substantive portion of current textbook cost -- so why should people expect the cost to be lower. Plus, the current cost of generating truly media rich content and integrating it in pedagogically proven ways can be quite high. Digital textbooks should probably cost more not less right now if we are just talking about costs and truly media rich versions. The costs for consumers are marginally lower currently as we look at "PDF equivalents" and publishers attempt to build market share for digital.

As we look at the inventory challenge, most textbooks currently available in digital are the large adoptions -- so mostly content oriented toward first- and second-year courses. If students start coming to campus with tablets in growing numbers, over a four-year period you could have more than half of all textbook content available digitally.

So what would that mean for the printed textbook in four years time -- i.e., 2015? What happens if tablet adoption follows patterns similar to iPod or smartphone adoption in recent years? (A reasonable projection, since most technologies are on accelerating adoption curves, and early projections say this technology is on a similar or faster trajectory than the identified counterparts). What if just half of students have a tablet device by 2015, and they acquire just half of all of their textbooks in digital format? That is 25% of course materials being sold digital right there.

Is there anyone credible out there who STILL does not think trends in digital content or mobile devices or technology in general does not matter in the textbook world?

Textbook Costs Gone Wild

Sometimes, you just can’t make this stuff up...

College students always complain about the cost of textbooks, but imagine the howls if they had to shell out the eight-figure price for a single title that Michael Eisen wrote about in a recent blog post. The evolutionary biologist from the University of California, Berkleley, was searching Amazon.com for The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence when he found 17 used editions priced for less than $36 apeice—and two, unused copies of the out-of-print book listed at just over $1.7 million, and nearly $2.2 million, respecctively (not including shipping).

Thinking it had to be a computer glitch, he reloaded the page. When he did, the price had increased to nearly $2.8 million. He kept tabs on the title and saw it ended the day priced at more than $3.5 million.

Theorizing he was watching pricing algorithms gone wild, Eisen monitored the prices for more than a week, with the cheaper edition reaching $5.6 million and the more expensive title upward of $7.2 million. “Clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price,” he observed.

Eisen concluded that pricing algorithms provide endless possibilities for mischief if no one is paying attention. In the case of The Making of a Fly, amazon.com finally did catch the error and dropped the price to $106.23 and $134.97 respectively, spoiling all the fun.

Three R's begin with i

While watching the list of school closings this morning, there was an interesting story on about the use of iPads in one of the local schools. Each of the students in the fifth grade class has been given an iPad. Here are a couple of the more interesting quotes from the story:

The teacher [Bizan] says iPads have improved student performance in spelling and math and student attendance is up.

"It makes people want to learn. It makes people want to come to school," said Rachel Lyman, a fifth grader.

Bizan says about 75 percent of his instruction takes place on the iPad now and he expects in the not-too-distant-future that'll be 100 percent.

Of course, my favorite quote -- or perhaps the one which is most telling, is the following from the classroom teacher:

"Five to six years from now, or 10 years from now, textbooks, I see them being gone and being on some kind of device," said Bizan.

You can find the story transcript or watch the video clip online on our local news station's site.

Alibris launches site optimized for mobile devices that will make textbook shopping easier

Earlier this week, Alibris, an online retailer of textbooks, books, movies, and music, announced that it has launched a new website that is optimized for smartphones and tablets. The new site could make it easier for students to comparison shop and make textbooks purchases from their devices.

Jeanie Bunker, general manager of Alibris Retail, commented, “We know our student buyers often check textbook prices from multiple sources before they buy, so having a mobile site is the best way for them to shop on the go.”