Apple shakes up textbook publishing

Rumours of Apple’s entry into the digital textbook market were confirmed this morning with the announcement of iBooks 2.

The latest version of Apple’s e-reading platform focuses on media-rich, interactive digital textbooks designed for the iPad. Education publishers McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – which comprise approximately 90 per cent of U.S. textbook market sales – have signed on as the first content partners.

But it’s not just international corporations that will have the capability to produce and sell e-textbook content. Apple also announced iBooks Author, a free DIY ebook app that has been compared to GarageBand, Apple’s audio-editing software that has made digital recording and sound engineering accessible to independent musicians and podcast producers.

“Education is deep in our DNA,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice-president of world-wide marketing, at a launch event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Schiller also noted that education institutions already use “more than 1.5 million iPads and have access to more than 20,000 education apps,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple’s move into education isn’t all about the children. If a publisher wants to take advantage of the platform, it has to sign an exclusivity contract with Apple, and keep textbook prices at $14.99 or less (of which Apple takes its customary 30 per cent cut). While the lower price is great for students, there is the upfront cost of purchasing an iPad. And as tech website Engadget points out, with all the interactive graphics and video, the first released e-textbooks take up anywhere from 800MB to 2.77GB of memory, which means it won’t take much to fill a low-end 16GB tablet. Also, what happens when the classroom iPad breaks?

Reaction from Twitter users has been mixed:

Students prefer print for look, feel, and font

Two recent studies shed some light as to why e-books haven’t caught on with students – they don’t feel right, and they make the work too easy.

Earlier this month, the Book Industry Study Group released “Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education,” a report that claims 75 per cent of students polled prefer print textbooks to e-books, largely because of their “look and feel.”

A few months prior to the BISG report, a study conducted by Princeton University psychologists found students achieved higher grades when they studied from material written in difficult fonts, including the widely scorned Comic Sans. Apparently, these fonts require readers to put more effort into reading, which leads to more information retained. Easier-to-read typefaces like Arial, Caecillia, or Times New Roman – the preferred fonts of many textbooks and e-books – make it too easy for readers to passively consume the written word.

“When we see a font that is easy to read we’re able to process that in a mindless way, but when we see an unfamiliar font, one full of weird squiggles, we have to work a little bit harder […] All the extra work, the slight cognitive frisson of having to decipher the words – wakes us up,” explains science writer Jonah Lehrer at the Daily Mail Online.

Aussie readers asked for input about future of publishing

Last week, the Internet behemoth Google launched its e-book sales site, Google eBooks, in the U.S. The e-book market is now crowded with offerings from Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Sony, which in turn has spawned a cottage industry for articles about the future of reading and the future of publishing. Amid all this cacophony, it’s small wonder publishers have responded to the rapidly diversifying marketplace with a mixture of fear and confusion.

In Australia, a consortium called the Book Industry Strategy Group is directly petitioning readers about their reading habits, desires, and preferences as a way of gaining clearer insights into the way forward. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Barry Jones, chair of the BISG, states that the group is “seeking ideas from all Australians on how to face the challenges of the digital age, and to turn them into opportunities.” Jones suggests that opportunities lie in the flexibility and ready availability of e-books as against their print counterparts:

Where Amazon and Apple have got it right is the immediacy of purchasing an eBook. Both the Kindle and the iPad come with wireless connectivity to the Amazon and Apple stores, respectively. In the case of the Kindle, if you have an Amazon account, the Kindle comes preconfigured with your details so you can buy a book at 3am if you so desire. New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton calls this Me Economics, which is really just instant gratification in book buying. But it beats late-night television.

And although Jones throws a bone to those of us who still enjoy reading printed books (which he refers to as “pBooks”), it is clear that the digital arena is where he and his group are most invested:

And what about people who like the smell of books or the feel of books, or the cover artwork, or who just want to scribble over the pages? No, these sorts of people will mix up their reading habits and buy both pBooks and eBooks.

Public libraries are starting to offer access to eBooks via downloads or by access, by borrowers, to subscriptions taken out by the library. We want to hear about these initiatives and your experiences with them.

School kids will agree that carrying an eReader with all their textbooks on it beats carrying a heavy school bag with all their textbooks in it. And textbooks form a large part of the book industry in Australia. Can we hear your thoughts?

The public can submit comments and suggestions to the BISG until Jan. 31, 2011. One hopes that they will be slightly more innovative and nuanced than the sort of shopworn analysis Jones allows himself above.

Daily book biz round-up: Starbucks books; Ian Tyson cashes in; and more

Today’s book news:

• Starbucks teams with iBookstore for new Wi-Fi digital network
• Ian Tyson says he wrote new memoir solely “for the money”
• College students still love expensive, back-breaking textbooks, says NY Times
• Is there a new Nook coming? And does anyone care?
• Harvard Bookstore launches bicycle delivery program

Daily book biz round-up: new Oprah pick coming; money for Ontario textbooks?; and more

Today’s book news:

• Oprah prepares to announce new book club pick, and it’s not Freedom
• Scholastic Book Club takes new marketing approach
• Dalton McGuinty makes vague reference to helping Ontario schools cover cost of textbooks
• Penguin sues sports writer over undelivered bio
• Century 21 scoops up former Barnes & Noble space before corpse is even cold
• EW uncovers shocking Hollywood prejudice: authors not asked to be on Dancing With the Stars
• Delightful literary oddities available on EBay

Daily book biz round-up: Target to sell Kindle; props to Galchen and Bezmozgis; and more

Browse and click!

• Canadians Rivka Galchen and David Bezmozgis make The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• New copyright legislation gets tough about breaking digital encryption locks
• Target to become first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell Kindle
• Simon & Schuster U.S. publisher David Rosenthal gets the ol’ heave-ho
• Follett of Canada to begin renting textbooks to college students
• Indie booksellers in U.K. find yet more reasons to be mad at Amazon

Macmillan U.K. admits to bribery

According to a report from Reuters, officials from the U.K. arm of Macmillan have admitted that they paid bribes to secure a potentially lucrative deal to print textbooks in southern Sudan.

Macmillan said it made “corrupt payments” in a bidding process for an education project supported by a World Bank-managed fund in the African region, the [World Bank] said in a statement.

“The World Bank Group has debarred Macmillan Limited … declaring the company ineligible to be awarded Bank-financed contracts for a period of six years in the wake of the company’s admission of bribery payments relating to a Trust Fund-supported education project in Southern Sudan,” read the statement.

As the article goes on to state, however, the six-year ineligibility period may be reduced to as little as three years in recognition of the fact that Macmillan has been quick to respond to the controversy.

Macmillan had agreed to roll out a “compliance monitoring program” and cooperate with the bank’s efforts to fight fraud and corruption, the World Bank statement read.

“Macmillan admitted engaging in bribes [...],” a World Bank official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “This happened during the bidding process and Macmillan did not get the contract.”

The official, based in Washington, said the payments were offered between 2008 and 2009.

Bookmarks: Going Rogue mistakes, aliens and werewolves, Xbox Bibles, and more

A few bookish links from around the Web:

• Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir hits shelves today. Palin tells Oprah in an unused clip from yesterday’s interview that “logistically speaking, practically speaking, it wasn’t a real difficult exercise to write the book” (via GalleyCat) 
• The Associated Press has compiled a list of the errors found in Going Rogue
• Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight empire series, also sat on Oprah’s couch in a rare public appearance last Friday. In an unused clip (via Entertainment Weekly), Meyer admits to being “a little burned out by vampires” and says that she “may go spend some time with … aliens.” 
• For those of you sick of everything vampire, Bookgasm offers a werewolf alternative in David Wellington’s Frostbite 
• The New Oxford American Dictionary‘s Word of the Year is “unfriend,” which is defined as: “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”  Runners-up for the title included “hashtag,” “sexting,” “teabagger,” and “tramp stamp”
• The future is digital: the National Post reports that students at Toronto’s Blyth Academy will all receive a Sony Reader to replace those stuffy old textbooks of yore 
• How would you like your Bible?  Handwritten or on your Xbox? 

Terminating textbooks, with extreme prejudice

As many of you probably already know, the state of California is dealing with one of its worst ever fiscal crises, and governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing a number of emergency measures to deal with the $24-billion deficit. His latest idea, according to The Daily Mail, is to join the digital publishing revolution by banning the use of textbooks in schools.

Jokingly telling a press conference that large books are now only suitable to be used for weightlifting (biceps curls in particular), he said: “Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion. For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way. Our kids get their information from the internet, downloaded onto their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their cell phones … Basically, kids are feeling as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons.”

“So why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?”

State officials say the average price of a textbook is $75 to $100, whereas digital media can be distributed cheaply if the required infrastructure is in place.

Unfortunately, Arnie never addresses the matter of having to buy handheld reading devices for all of the state’s less well-off children, nor does he address the costs of digitization and who will be paying for it. Also, why stop at textbooks? Why not close down all the schools and have teachers instruct their pupils via BlackBerry?

Curl up with a good mash-up

Advances in digital publishing have brought us to the ever-so-modern and high-tech production of what LibreDigital is calling book “mash-ups.”

The “mash-ups” are custom publications filled with content from several different sources and bound into one handy book. Using the eCompile Service, publishers can create custom publications for the truly demanding customer. LibreDigital is promoting their use for college textbooks and professional directories.

LibreDigital will announce the latest eCompile Service program at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference in New York today.