Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Books Good News/Bad News
Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:16 PM
The Good News: Northwestern State Missouri is going to become (possibly) the first all-digital textbook college in the country.
The Bad News: "The school hopes to keep [digital textbook prices] “at or below ” what students are paying now."
I'm all for college textbooks going digital: If there's any book that could use the benefits of an ebook format, it's a bloated, expensive college textbook. But why bother if it's going to cost the same?
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1
SEARCH!
i agree it's stupid to charge even half the cost of the printed book but being able to search my text books would have been invaluable.
i agree it's stupid to charge even half the cost of the printed book but being able to search my text books would have been invaluable.
3
I always worry about electricity going out, hard drives crashing, batteries dying right when I need something digital. I'm reading a textbook on Mayan history right now that I can't imagine trying to see on a screen and refer back and forth across pages to look at figures mentioned in the text. Besides, there's something comforting about falling asleep with a wordy textbook on your chest.
4
What a cabal!
Talk about conspiracy to keep students from being able to afford college even more...
Talk about conspiracy to keep students from being able to afford college even more...
5
You also can't resell them. The biggest expense for book publishers is printing, binding, and shipping. They have to give on the price of digital copies or they're just begging to be robbed blind by illegal downloads.
6
Blech. Maybe some people would want digital textbooks, but give me some dead trees and a highlighter any day of the week.
7
if only printed books had a way of indexing terms so that they could be found in the accompanying text......
8
The cool kids will find a way to get their e-books for free. They're teaching an important lesson to their students not to be laaaame.
9
Seattle U law school is working right now on electronic text system, and i know they are specifically trying to make it cheaper. This is easier in Law than some other contexts because so much of the material is open source case law.
10
Some of the books for classes at NSCC were offered digitally when I went there a few years ago.
The e-book was a protected PDF, which meant it wasn't portable to an e-reader or smart phone.
It cost 80% of the new book, which was more than the cost of a used book.
It was licensed, not sold, and the license could not be transferred, so no re-selling of the book back to the bookstore next quarter.
The license only extended to a few devices, or maybe only one, buy a new computer and you were screwed.
The license expired after a few years.
Why tf would I want an e-book with that kind of headache? If a college forced me to buy into this, they've only made the "textbooks are too expensive" problem worse, not better. Since so very little of ivory tower administrative policy makes any sense, it would probably be lauded as an improvement to force students into this trap.
The e-book was a protected PDF, which meant it wasn't portable to an e-reader or smart phone.
It cost 80% of the new book, which was more than the cost of a used book.
It was licensed, not sold, and the license could not be transferred, so no re-selling of the book back to the bookstore next quarter.
The license only extended to a few devices, or maybe only one, buy a new computer and you were screwed.
The license expired after a few years.
Why tf would I want an e-book with that kind of headache? If a college forced me to buy into this, they've only made the "textbooks are too expensive" problem worse, not better. Since so very little of ivory tower administrative policy makes any sense, it would probably be lauded as an improvement to force students into this trap.
11
@Johny most e-readers don't read like monitors do, they are much easier on the eyes, they run on flash memory (which can still fail, but not as easily as a hard drive) as for batteries that could be an issue but I'm guessing they have enough life that I wouldn't worry about it. The benefits would be search, hyper-linking in notes, easier source-citing(if not currently available I'm sure someone will make an MS word plugin) and portability (carry 30 books in your small bag)!
I say go digi or go home.
I say go digi or go home.
12
Scholastic publishing is one of the most lucrative businesses in this country. You don't really think they're going to give those profits up, do you?
13
This pretty much means free text books for - or for friends of - the more technology savvy students. Text book publishers have been colluding to squeeze every last dime out of students for decades now, this potential new age of piracy makes me a little warm and fuzzy inside I have to admit.
16
Because of, um, the benefits?
If there's any book that could use the benefits of an ebook format, it's a bloated, expensive college textbook. But why bother if it's going to cost the same?
Because of, um, the benefits?
17
Good luck selling back your digital copy of Intro to Chemistry for beer money now.
"Hopes" to keep prices at or below? Seriously? You just eliminated a TON of costs from your production and you "hope" you can at least keep books costing the same? Gee, thanks textbook publishers! Prepare to sell about 10% of the books you used to unless you've got some killer DRM. Oh wait! There's no such thing!
"Hopes" to keep prices at or below? Seriously? You just eliminated a TON of costs from your production and you "hope" you can at least keep books costing the same? Gee, thanks textbook publishers! Prepare to sell about 10% of the books you used to unless you've got some killer DRM. Oh wait! There's no such thing!
18
Actually, if you're studying biology, biochemistry, or medicine, it's the big honking books with cool illustrations that most grad students love.
Not the weight, or for ease of search (easier to do online journal searches and view the PDFs), but it's somehow different and easier to study in a way that's hard to describe.
And it's kind of hard to doodle on an ebook.
Not the weight, or for ease of search (easier to do online journal searches and view the PDFs), but it's somehow different and easier to study in a way that's hard to describe.
And it's kind of hard to doodle on an ebook.
19
no like. i'm in law school now, and it's much easier to have the physical book. most students use 5 colored highlighters to note certain sections of text, and it's a lot easier to do it in an actual book than, say, a westlaw download.
21
@17 if you'd read the article, you'd know that at the university in the article they rent their books to students at about $6/credit hour. I think, but am not sure, if a class meets for five hours a week, they could rent the book for $30.
They also have a three year cycle, only allowing professors to get new editions or new books at the end of a cycle. Much better than how it works at the UW, where you could get a new edition every year whenever the publisher changes a graphic or alters the order of chapters.
They also have a three year cycle, only allowing professors to get new editions or new books at the end of a cycle. Much better than how it works at the UW, where you could get a new edition every year whenever the publisher changes a graphic or alters the order of chapters.
22
I was thinking the other day that K-12s should replace text books with Kindels. Except for a literature text and a couple film and plot sci books, I never kept any of my textbooks. My senior year I didn't even buy the books because we never read more than a chapter once in awhile, so I paid a friend $.50 a page to Xerox the pages I was supposed to read.
23
You're not buying the paper so much as the intellectual the intelectual property, just like software. Pricing won't depend so much on the media, should the artists make less money if their music is mp3 vs cd?
24
If you read the actual article linked in the article linked in the Slog entry (http://www.nacs.org/news/011609-digital.…) you see that
a) it's still just a pilot program; NMSU just "hopes" to offer all-digital textbooks
b) nowhere does it say they'll not allow regular textbooks -- "all digital" may mean "all AVAILABLE as digital"
c) like @21 points out, NMSU already has a weird textbook-rental as their default. It's the rental rates they want to match with the digital program, not the cost of print books. I'm assuming you can't mark up a rental book -- if I'm right, you can mark up a digital text MORE than you can a rental. The Sony they're considering has note and highlight functions.
a) it's still just a pilot program; NMSU just "hopes" to offer all-digital textbooks
b) nowhere does it say they'll not allow regular textbooks -- "all digital" may mean "all AVAILABLE as digital"
c) like @21 points out, NMSU already has a weird textbook-rental as their default. It's the rental rates they want to match with the digital program, not the cost of print books. I'm assuming you can't mark up a rental book -- if I'm right, you can mark up a digital text MORE than you can a rental. The Sony they're considering has note and highlight functions.
25
NWMSU.
I've slept there.
and saw an ok production of "How to Succeed in Business w/o Really Trying"
I've slept there.
and saw an ok production of "How to Succeed in Business w/o Really Trying"
26
It's unfortunate that the textbook industry behaves the way it does. I think that's it's a prime example of a market where the relentless drive for ever increasing profits runs counter to the fundamental purpose of the business in the long run. Other examples might be insurance and healthcare.
Yes, I realize that the true purpose of these companies is to generate profit, but their function in the market that they use to generate that profit serves an important social role that at times runs counter to their short term financial interest.
One could argue that the main barriers to their generation of profit are production costs (labor and material), and sales barriers (product price, and lower demand due to used book sales). The publishers are fighting a constant battle to balance these two factors buy giving students a high enough quality book to justify the price and changing content and obseletizeing old books to discourage used sales. Some subjects are relatively fixed and don't really need to be updated regularly, therefor the publishers give teachers various incentives to use their latest editions.
If the publishers had any brains at all and they would have been paying attention to the music industry and doing their best to draw valuable lessons from them. Sadly this is not the case, the book publishing industry has quite a few giants that just don't "get" the internet or technology, sure there are small shops with some good ideas, but by and large, the industry is lingering in another era.
The giants have a choice, invest in the next market or fall behind. Some of them won't make it, some might get it together at the last moment, and some will be blazing the trail.
For the textbook makers, they need to realize that they are going to have to bring down their prices and make up the difference in volume. It's true that they will never completely defeat piracy, they need to recognize that and move on. Taking a lesson for Apple, if you make purchasing the legitimate version easy enough and cheap enough, most people won't bother with the crap shoot of finding and downloading pirated versions. The advantage of taking that market position is that with this new tech, they have the potential of eliminating the used books sales market, one of their main competitors. In doing so, they would effectively multiply their sales base, which would allow them to lower their prices without taking a hit to their bottom line. But with their technologically inept, greedy management that will never happen. They probably should also decide on a standardized file format to encourage widespread adoption.
Not that any of this would ever happen anyways, but it should.
More...
Yes, I realize that the true purpose of these companies is to generate profit, but their function in the market that they use to generate that profit serves an important social role that at times runs counter to their short term financial interest.
One could argue that the main barriers to their generation of profit are production costs (labor and material), and sales barriers (product price, and lower demand due to used book sales). The publishers are fighting a constant battle to balance these two factors buy giving students a high enough quality book to justify the price and changing content and obseletizeing old books to discourage used sales. Some subjects are relatively fixed and don't really need to be updated regularly, therefor the publishers give teachers various incentives to use their latest editions.
If the publishers had any brains at all and they would have been paying attention to the music industry and doing their best to draw valuable lessons from them. Sadly this is not the case, the book publishing industry has quite a few giants that just don't "get" the internet or technology, sure there are small shops with some good ideas, but by and large, the industry is lingering in another era.
The giants have a choice, invest in the next market or fall behind. Some of them won't make it, some might get it together at the last moment, and some will be blazing the trail.
For the textbook makers, they need to realize that they are going to have to bring down their prices and make up the difference in volume. It's true that they will never completely defeat piracy, they need to recognize that and move on. Taking a lesson for Apple, if you make purchasing the legitimate version easy enough and cheap enough, most people won't bother with the crap shoot of finding and downloading pirated versions. The advantage of taking that market position is that with this new tech, they have the potential of eliminating the used books sales market, one of their main competitors. In doing so, they would effectively multiply their sales base, which would allow them to lower their prices without taking a hit to their bottom line. But with their technologically inept, greedy management that will never happen. They probably should also decide on a standardized file format to encourage widespread adoption.
Not that any of this would ever happen anyways, but it should.
28
Though probably no one will read this, I'd like for everyone to know that Northwest is my alma mater. Go Bearcats.
30
@ 27: because that won't help you in college. you need the book accessible in class. also, there are limited copies in the library, and you can't check them out every day. are you suggesting people not go to college?
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