TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » textbooks

Self-Published Books Not a Solution for K-12? Don’t Be So Sure…

Joanna Cabot — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:37:12 +0000

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 [...]

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Supreme Court rules importation of textbooks legal under First Sale doctrine

Chris Meadows — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:35:24 +0000

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 [...]

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For more free textbooks, look at iTunes U

Aggregated Content — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:48:07 +0000

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 [...]

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A legitimate archive of free textbooks

Dan Eldridge — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:19:31 +0000

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 [...]

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What’s Happening to College Bookstores?

Aggregated Content — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 03:56:11 +0000

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 [...]

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App Review: Nota

Susan Lulgjuraj — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:00:13 +0000

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 [...]

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Bookshare introduces new products for disabled readers

Susan Lulgjuraj — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:00:44 +0000

Bookshare has developed two new digital products to help those with disabilities. Bookshare’s Web Reader and Bookshelf were announced at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference, held January 30 through February 2 in Orlando, Fla. The products were created to help those with impairments such as learning disabilities, physical disabilities or low vision. The Web Reader will [...]

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McGraw-Hill: We don’t need no education publishers

Aggregated Content — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:21:30 +0000

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 [...]

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Where to Look for Textbook Alternatives

Joanna Cabot — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:46:37 +0000

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 [...]

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Morning Roundup — Stories you may have missed

Joanna Cabot — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:16:40 +0000

15 Must-Have Collaboration Tools for Journalists (Media Shift) 3M Expands Collaboration with Penguin (Good E-Reader) The Kind of Journalism we Need is Changing but Can Journalists Make the Transition? (GigaOM) Digital Textbook Study Shows Interactive Features Were Used More than Embedded Videos (The Digital Reader) Kindle Daily Deal: Lit by Mary Karr {and} The Elephant’s [...]

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Morning Roundup — Stories you may have missed

Joanna Cabot — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:12:51 +0000

Why I’m Not Sold on the iPad Mini (Good E-Reader) Will Disney Block Star Wars Fan-Made Content? (Techdirt) Content Hackathons: The Future of Textbooks (GigaOM) Readability Adds New Grid Reading View (The Digital Reader) Kindle Daily Deal: Sly Fox by Jeanine Pirro {and} The Templeton Twins Have an Idea by Jeremy Holmes & Ellis Weiner * * [...]

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Report says 57.8% of U.S. students prefer digital textbooks

Dan Eldridge — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:19:19 +0000

Back in mid-June, we posted a press release that introduced you to BookBoon.com, a London-based online publisher that offers free open-access textbooks for students. We heard from BookBoon again this morning; apparently the company recently asked roughly 10,000 students about their preferences between digital textbooks and printed textbooks. According to BookBoon, 2,164 respondents were students based [...]

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Textbooks: A race to the bottom?

Joanna Cabot — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:41:06 +0000

From The Textbook Guru comes this interesting op-ed on the price of textbooks. We’ve all heard about how Amazon, the secondhand market, textbook rentals and so on are taking a bite of Big Pub, but what this article points out is that the average price per title is falling across all markets, not just the [...]

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Inkling expands beyond iOS with HTML5 web-based e-textbook reading app

Chris Meadows — Thu, 31 May 2012 04:07:51 +0000

We previously reported that Inkling was launching a free e-book publishing platform in competition to Apple’s more restricted iBook Author, and that it was partnering with Follett in an e-textbook program. Up to this point, the utility of Inkling has been a bit limited in that access to its textbooks was restricted to its iOS [...]

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Digital content alone may not reduce textbook prices

Chris Meadows — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:34:16 +0000

Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of SharedBook, has an opinion piece on Inside Higher Ed stating that “going digital” is not a panacea that will automatically bring about lower prices for textbooks. Much as publishers of mass market fiction have been saying, if the costs of producing the material remain the same, the price of the textbook [...]

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