Survey Finds Tablet Users Buy Content

In the study A Portrait of Today’s Tablet Users—Wave II, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that adoption of the electronic gadgets in the United States is up from 2011, and still rising, and that the vast majority of people use the devices to access content and information.

The online survey from the OPA and Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. reached 2,540 individuals between the ages of 8 and 64 from March 19-26, 2012. It found that 67% of those surveyed used tablets to surf the web and 66% checked their e-mail. Other primary activities include watching videos (54%), getting weather information (49%), reading national news (37%), and viewing entertainment content (36%).

The report found that 74% of users use their tablets daily, with 60% using it several times each day. In addition, tablet users spend 13.9 hours per week on the device, 92% of video watched on a tablet involve news and entertainment clips, 23% of all tablet applications downloaded in the past year were paid apps, and that the tablet app market doubled in size from $1.4 billion in 2011 to an estimated $2.6 billion this year.

“The growing base of tablet users is also showing a healthy appetite for paid content with 61% having purchased tablet content in the past year,” said Pam Horan, president of the OPA. “Considering tablets have only been available for a little over two years, the findings of this study truly underscore the possibilities for publishers to grow their business as consumers are willing to open their wallets in order to have original content at their fingertips.”

Digital ≠ Free

The statement that “Information wants to be free,” is attributed to Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand. Unfortunately, many consumers and even some digital activists today seem to forget that Brand’s very next utterance was “Information also wants to be expensive,” a truth known all too well by publishers, IT staff, and college stores and other content retailers.

As this post on The Scholarly Kitchen blog notes in great detail, the storage and delivery of digital content has costs. Maintenance of current digital warehousing and development of future methods both involve highly skilled professionals and complex equipment. Also—cat videos on YouTube notwithstanding—most content creators need or at least hope to be paid for their efforts. Even producing and disseminating those cat videos requires time, equipment, energy, and bandwidth. Add in backup and security.

“If there’s no place to put it, and nobody to manage it, does it exist?” asks blogger Kent Anderson. “Quick, find me all your five-year-old e-mails.”

The real price tag for digital goods may serve as a tempering response to those who demand free e-textbooks based on the notion that removing printing, binding, and shipping eliminates all the principal costs of creating course content.

Follett's prediction of digital learning

Follett Higher Education group recently published a white paper titled “Are Textbooks Dead?” that assesses the evolution of course materials and the future of digital learning.   This is a must read for everyone involved in the course materials business.  Here are some quotes and highlights of the paper that are consistent with the messages of this blog for the past few years.

“As the campus appetite for digital materials increases, it stands to reason that publishers and providers will concentrate first on evolving a select group of textbooks because they are most widely used and produce the most revenue.”

i.e., large adoptions will move to digital first because of economies of scale and effect. 

Follett predicts that there will be two paths for digital: Native Digital and Enhanced Print.  We have traditionally referred to Native Digital as "born digital," but agree that Follett's labeling in this report is more consistent with the more common terminology that has evolved.  Enhanced Print takes the "PDF-equivalent" digital and "enhances" it with multimedia or other elements.  Inkling textbooks might be an example in this category.  From there, Follett has some interesting discussion within the report.  For example, their comparison of the two paths:

Native Digital

PACE OF GROWTH:  Faster

DISCIPLINES: Problem-based with linear learning

PURCHASE DECISION: Faculty select

BENEFITS: Better student performance; Engagement and retention; Adaptive learning;

Enhance Print

PACE OF GROWTH: Slower

DISCIPLINES: Theory-based with conceptual learning

PURCHASE DECISION: Student select

BENEFITS: Efficiency; Cost and social learning with ability to share notes and link to additional resources

Within the paper Follett provides their prediction for how course materials will evolve. The report provides an interesting table outlining the evolution, along with several other great charts and graphs.  Finally, in the report Follett proposes seven key considerations for decision makers on campus:

1. Develop a strategy to address issues surfacing as course materials evolve from print to digital. 
2. Give key stakeholders a chance to bring their ideas and concerns into the decision-making process, a collaboration that offers the best prospect for practical solutions and long-term success.
3. Consider IT support when making digital course material choices – both how the material might work in conjunction with existing campus technology and also how much time students and faculty will require to become familiar with the platform.
4. Standardize platforms and applications adopted and used by faculty and students, minimizing IT support and reducing learning curve.
5. Take advantage of the campus bookstore’s ability to leverage established relationships with publishers, soliciting and vetting faculty adoptions, then aggregating and making them conveniently available.
6. Guard against quickly adopting technology because of pressure from industry “noise.”
7. Be willing to relinquish the past.

 A very solid set of recommendations and advice, consistent with our prior recommendations.  The Follett report should definitely be on every store's reading list as they prepare and engage in their course materials strategy discussion.

Used Digital Market

No, it’s not what you think.  This new company isn’t about used digital textbooks but used digital music -- but could the idea for one be used for the other?  (At that statement, I am sure there is more than one blanching publisher out there).   The online company Redigi is creating a marketplace for pre-owned digital music.  The company’s proprietary cloud service technology allows for legal transfer of used digital music to a secondary market.

This idea was discussed several years ago for textbooks but did not get any traction as the timing was not right and the technology not quite ready.  Perhaps, the music industry will shed light on the success of this concept to the publishing world.  It is perfectly foreseeable that a student would want to buy a digitally books with underlines and notes on them if the used digital could be sold that way.  Again, it's all about value and choices for students.  What's old could be new again.

The e-book in education: jackpot or snake oil?

The Obama administration recently announced a challenge to schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years.  This is comparable to initiatives in other countries to move to all-digital textbooks -- with prominent examples being South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh.  The announcement was made by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski. 

The administration noted that digital books are viewed as a way to provide interactive learning, potentially save money and get updated material faster to students.  "Potentially" is a key word here, as there is little evidence that digital will save money, particularly over the long term.  While there is some evidence that interactive digital tools by some of the traditional textbook publishers do improve learning outcomes, there is still much question about the educational value of technology.  One news story uses the following quote to point out this challenge:

Clifford Stoll, the author of "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," may have made the best point for the opposition when he compared computers to the filmstrips of his youth. "We loved them because we didn't have to think for an hour, teachers loved them because they didn't have to teach, and parents loved them because it showed their schools were high-tech. But no learning happened."

The news story goes on to question the true affordability of digital, which requires access to technology which may not be evenly distributed among public schools.  The administration hopes that digital course materials and the technology they run on will become more affordable in coming years. 

According to the original Associated Press story, the government also released a 67-page "playbook" to schools that promotes the use of digital textbooks and offers guidance.

Study Finds eBooks Revenues Will Reach $9.7billion by 2016

MarketWatch’s recent press release highlighted a report from Juniper Research that predicts eBooks revenue will reach to $9.7 billion by 2016, an increase from $3.2 billion in 2011.  The report also suggest that the 30% of all eBook downloads will occur through tablet devices by 2016.  The upsurge is the result of ongoing growth in the dedicated eReader market as well as increase sales of tablet devices.

Is there anyone out there who still think digital books (or course materials) will not matter to booksellers or college stores by 2015?  If you are a retailer, what is your digital strategy?

Google eBooks come to College Stores

The Canadian Campus Retail Associates (CCRA) and Independent College Bookseller's Association (ICBA) announced this week that they have completed an agreement and integration with Google eBooks to distribute ebooks through college stores in Canada and shortly in the U.S.  This is similar the arrangement that the American Bookseller's Association (ABA) has with Google to distribute ebooks via Indie Commerce. This brings yet another option for college stores to provide customers with opportunities to discover, read and buy digital books on a range of devices and at competitive prices.   
 
Chris Tabor from the CCRA noted that "This is our first step with the potential of the Google ecosystems. Google is an incredible company to work with.  We learned a lot and are looking forward to more."


18 Canadian stores are participating in the initial launch, and other stores will begin to have access within the next 60 days.  Roughly 200 college stores are expected to be live with Google ebooks soon, as this service is offered to all CCRA and ICBA members, as well as stores currently participating in the Digital Content Platform initiative which is also co-sponsored by the two organizations.
 
Disclaimer:  Some folks who read this blog may know that NACS Media Solutions (NMS) did work with CCRA and ICBA on the digital content platform initiative and related pilots.  While we were aware of this pending development in advance from our prior participation, at this time NMS has no direct financial stake or active engagement in this initiative other than a sincere desire to see this initiative and others like it be successful within the college store industry.  Any questions about the current and upcoming offering should be directed to either CCRA or ICBA. 

New Platforms to Access University Press E-Books

Wired Campus reports several online platforms for University-Press Ebooks that are about to be introduced into the market.  These include Oxford Press’s University Press Scholarship Online, ProjectMUSE, JSTOR, and University Publishing Online, a Cambridge University Press’s platform.

Oxford Press announced that its University Press Scholarship Online will includes monographs from the American University in Cairo Press, Fordham University Press, Hong Kong University Press, University Press of Florida, and the University Press of Kentucky, with Edinburgh University Press and Policy Press scheduled to join the project in March 20.

According to Wired Campus ProjectMUSE Ebooks will include more than 14,000 titles from 66 university and scholarly presses.  JSTOR, has more than 20 publishers that are participating and expects to reach 30 by the time  it goes live in the summer of 2012, says the article.

University Publishing Online, Cambridge University Press’s has publishers on board like  Books India, Liverpool University Press, and the Mathematical Association of America, as well as Cambridge University Press.

McGraw-Hill Digital Resource Platform

University Business has a new On-Demand web seminar (free if you sign up) on McGraw-Hill's new digital resource platform. According to the seminar, via the platform McGraw-Hill will give all professors full access to all curricular resources and tools, whether or not they use a McGraw-Hill textbook.

For professors, getting access to relevant and trusted online instructional resources and tools has been an ad-hoc, hit-or-miss process. This web seminar will demonstrate McGraw-Hill Campus, a new service that provides all faculty members across campus with one-click, unlimited access to McGraw-Hill's entire library of academic e-content and associated tools - directly from within the course management system. There is no fee for the platform, and instructors can use it regardless of whether or not they use a McGraw-Hill textbook.

This is the same platform which BlackBoard and McGraw-Hill have been piloting on different campuses this year. The McGraw-Hill tools include "an application to help faculty create digital course content and assignments and do automatic grading" and another which "lets faculty compile textbooks that use their own materials as well as content from the company's publishing portfolio." The integration of the tools with BlackBoard can allow students to buy the textbooks via a link on the course site.

Kindle Singles

One of the highlights in last week's digital news was the announcement of Amazon's new "Kindle Singles." The idea is a short work limited to at most 30k words, but well-researched. One of the more interesting aspects is one of the first ever books published by TED -- the site and conference which has the inspiring and thought provoking videos and content.

The concept is an interesting one -- and moves Amazon into a unique content-production business that could be viewed as a first step into new forms of competition for publishers, and begins to change the author-publisher dynamic for certain types of work. I will admit, it is the first real content or development that has made me consider downloading the Kindle app to one of my devices.

To be fair, the concept is not entirely new, though. I see similarities to the "Nooners" and "Spicy Briefs" concepts pioneered more by publishers like Harlequin a couple years ago. That is -- recognizing that there is a niche for short works on a topic or by a favorite author, that can be delivered digitally on demand, and which might be used to drive demand for additional short works, or additional longer works by the same author. It will be interesting to watch where these pieces will go in the future.

Children’s Reading Trends in the Digital Age

On Tuesday, December 14th, Book Business will be hosting a free webinar that you may find interesting. The webinar is called: “Children’s Reading Trends in the Digital Age: An All-Access Pass to Scholastic’s ‘2010 Kids and Family Reading Report.’”

The registration page for the webinar can be found here.

Kno announces pricing for tablets and begins accepting preorders

Earlier today, Kno announced the pricing for its single and dual-screen tablet devices and said that a limited number of devices will ship before the end of the year. As a reminder, the Kno Tablets were designed for higher education and include: 14-inch LCD screens to display full textbook pages; the ability to highlight and annotate; multitasking capabilities; support for stylus, touch, and keyboard input; and data backup in the cloud.

A posting on the All Things Digital website says that company will work with some college bookstores and the device will be aimed at 10 college campuses initially. This semester beta testing occurred at several campuses and Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Wiley provided select digital resources for the testing. The Kno website includes videos of a few students describing their experiences with the device and the company says that the student responses have been “overwhelmingly positive for both the single and dual screen devices.”

Students will be able to purchase textbooks through the Kno bookstore that will be accessible on the tablet. The store includes thousands of titles and the list can be viewed on Kno’s website. Currently the device has built in apps for reading, taking notes, and the web but additional apps are in development. A page on Kno’s website invites developers to help them design their development platform and build their app store. Apps for collaboration, specific subjects, educational games, and productivity tools will be available.

In addition, according to the New York Times, Kno plans to make its software available for laptops and potentially other tablets in the future.

These developments will certainly be ones to watch in the month’s ahead.

Study finds digital books could make up 25% of book sales by 2015

An article from The Bookseller.com discusses a new digital study that was conducted by Bain & Company. The study included 3,000 people from the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. The study found that up to 25% of books will be sold in digital format by 2015 and 15-20% of consumers will own e-reader devices. The study also showed that the switch to digital will occur more rapidly in the U.S. and Korea.

In terms of profit, the study found that digital could represent 20-28% of book industry profits. However, this will be dependent on innovation of the content and operating methods. The study noted, “Experimenting with new formats - non-linear, hybrid, interactive or social - is where opportunity lies.”

XanEdu and NYU Stern School of Business to conduct iPad pilot

According to a recent press release, XanEdu, provider of custom coursepacks and textbooks, has partnered with the NYU Stern School of Business to conduct a program-wide iPad pilot for MBA students. Instructors at the university will use XanEdu’s system to publish course materials that students can access on the iPads. The course materials will include digital note taking capabilities and collaboration tools. Throughout the pilot, students will be asked to provide feedback to help determine if the iPad app meets the needs of the students.