Christopher Harris has a thought-provoking essay up at The Digital Shift in which he argues that self-published books are "not a solution" for K-12. He argues that publishers "serve a critical role in the information ecosystem" by vetting and recommending quality books to school librarians, who often work alone without the benefits of a large paid staff to assist them in their book-buying choices. I sympathize with the task Harris, and other school librarians, face. But I think he misses the point that publishers have the prominence they do simply because until recently, we lacked the technological abilities for anyone else...

David Rabvinowitz has a great story up at TidBITS chronicling his experiences as a college student during this time of e-transition. Rabinowitz has a slightly more nuanced take on the whole situation because, in addition to regular classroom use, he was part of a pilot project at the University of Virginia to try out e-textbooks in an 'integrated fashion.' The whole essay is well-worth a read; Rabinowitz nicely sums up some of the advantages of e-texts (dictionary, highlighting, searchability) as well as some of the drawbacks. For instance: • Many e-books are flash-based, so you can't easily copy and paste into your study...

Remember the Supreme Court case about the Thai exchange student who bulk imported cheap overseas copies of textbooks and resold them in the U.S. (making over $1 million in sales) to finance his doctorate? The judges handed down a decision today. By a six to three majority, they found that the student’s importation and resale was legal under the Fair Use Doctrine. Just because the books were printed overseas did not exempt them from the right of First Sale, which means that people who buy them can resell them as they please. Ars Technica has more details on the decision. Essentially,...

By Dr. Frank Lowney This past weekend, Dr. Frank Lowney, an occasional TeleRead contributor, brought to our attention an online archive of free, Creative Commons licensed university textbooks known as the Flatworld Knowledge Book Archive. We heard from Dr. Lowney again yesterday; he told us that "another, larger source of free e-textbooks can actually be found on iTunes U. But that story, he said, is a bit more complicated." His explanation follows: Educational providers, such as institutions of higher education, can get a public iTunes U site from Apple at zero cost. Those public sites contain both "collections" and "courses." A collection can...

I received an email earlier this week from Dr. Frank Lowney, an occasional TeleRead contributor, and the author of The Coming ePublishing Revolution in Higher Education. Dr. Lowney, who is professionally affiliated with Georgia College & State University, most definitely knows his stuff when it comes to college textbooks, and higher education in general. That's important to point out, because in his email, Dr. Lowney brought to my attention a fantastic online archive of entirely free, Creative Commons licensed textbooks. (That is to say, a completely legit archive.) And while I am familiar with the company that originally created the archive--they're known...

By Dr. Frank Lowney I recently traveled to Kansas City, Mo., to attend the annual convention put on by the National Association of College Stores (NACS), and to participate in a panel discussion on the impact of emerging technologies upon the textbook business. The CAMpus market EXpo, or CAMEX, is billed as the “largest annual tradeshow and educational event in the collegiate retailing industry.” NACS represents nearly all U.S. college stores, but CAMEX is attended primarily by people who run campus-owned stores. Half of all college stores are campus-owned; the other half are outsourced operations such as eFollett. The experience firmed-up many of...

With tablets becoming part of the classroom, new apps regularly arrive on the market to aid educators. One of the newest releases for Android devices is Nota, an app that allows users to add videos, links and images to the pages of textbooks. Nota could aid a wide range of people, providing a comprehensive way for students to learn that goes far beyond mere words. “Cost has been a disruptive factor in education, with soaring student debt and escalating tuition causing many families to wonder whether they can—or even should—pursue a traditional degree,” Nota Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Ray wrote on the company's blog....

Techdirt has a great write-up about a school district that is spending over $2 million to switch back to paper textbooks after investing heavily in an on-line model. The problem? Surprisingly, it's not one of those, 'There isn't enough content available yet!' situations. There is content. But the hardware requirements to run it, in this age of multimedia, are so high that students who can't afford broadband Internet at home can't use them! Techdirt posits this as a form of DRM—they add in the 'bells and whistles' to prevent students from downloading an offline version. But it's more than that—it's not just broadband...

  By Andy Richardson, CEO of Influential Software It’s a case of another week, another publishing takeover. This week, McGraw-Hill announced that it was offloading its education publishing business, though this time not to another publisher. The private equity arm of investment firm Apollo Global Management will take control of the textbook publisher, which has undershot its revenue targets in seven of the last eight quarters and has been on the market for a year. Apollo’s decision to invest nearly $2.5 billion in the company is a signal that the money men believe there’s still a lot of profit to be made from educational publishing. What’s less clear, however, is...

I've seen a lot of articles lately about the high cost of textbooks. This one was about site licenses and how they penalize smaller schools. This one is about the use of e-readers in developing countries. This one is an infographic that looks at the issue from a variety of angles. It strikes me as a somewhat American obsession, this textbook habit. When I did my teacher training in New Zealand back in 2005, nobody used textbooks there. There were some resource packets produced by the government for certain curriculum areas, but other than that, you were on your own—it was your job,...

By Dr. Frank Lowney Editor's note: Those of you who read TeleRead regularly are probably well aware of the fact that Dr. Frank Lowney has been a staple in our comments section for quite some time now. Because of those comments, it was quite clear to me, long before I actually knew anything about Dr. Lowney or his work, that he was something of an expert in the academic publishing space. I emailed Dr. Lowney out of blue one day back back in September, asking if he'd be interested in contributing a post to TeleRead about the current state of the textbook market. In his reply, he told me...

Not wanting to be outdone by South Korea and others, which mandated the use of digital textbooks by 2015, earlier this year the FCC and the Department of Education released the Digital Textbook Playbook to help accelerate digital textbook adoption among American schools. According to a recent report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), it’s not a matter of if this transition will happen, but when. Since its launch in 2009, Inkling has been on a mission to reinvent publishing for the mobile, digital era by building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for the iPad. Initially focused on higher education, this year Inkling has been...