Drugs for Humps. Or Something Thereabouts.

Rumor has it that Amazon may be releasing their Kindle eBook reader in a modified format for the academic market. Having been employed by a number of text book publishers, my initial reaction was a gasp and shudder. Upon further reflection, this may just be the innovation that the text book market needs. For a very long time the publishing industry has been for lack of a better word, stately. Clinging to a business model that seems to be eroding from all directions. I have been fortunate to have been in the technology publishing space which tends to be more open minded and on the leading edge of innovation (at least as far as publishing goes).

Academic publishing has been at the opposite end of the spectrum. Publishers rely on selling very large numbers of very expensive books and only every once in a while. They tend to sell to one buyer who makes a decision for an entire school system and delivers customers en masse. Lose an adoption in a given year either due to a pass or competition and your whole business is shaken.

For teachers, this means lessons are handed down from above and dictated my third parties. The content is either not time sensitive or is outdated. There is no way an educator truly shine under these circumstances.

Students, are forced to spend a fortune on books and haul around massive tomes that are not providing them with the optimal educational experience (I wonder what the weight of all of the wasted content that is either not correct, out-of-date, or simply not taught amounts to). To the extent that it has actually become a health problem. The necessary evil of that has arisen or the whole circumstance is the used text book which helps neither the publisher, book seller, teacher or student. Marked-up, torn, neglected, boogered. For anyone who has worked in publishing, it is a horrible sight.

So what could the Kindle text book bring to the party?

• Updated Content – The biggest crime of text books is that they become outdated and schools and students can’t afford to update every year. In some fields, every year isn’t often enough, content needs to be literally up to the minute. Electronic content is updatable and correctable. Errata can be eliminated and students can get an evolving and accurate product that is worth the purchase price. Truly forward thinking publishers will model on the software as a service model and maintain a continuous revenue stream that can mean a lower up front cost.
• Portable -I for one was well known for not having my materials at class. Heck, in college I would ride my bike to campus for 4 or 5 classes in a day, many of which required three or four books. In high school, I distinctly remember not having room in my locker for my books because books like my Biology text book attempted to capture the history of existence in a single 1800 page – hard cover! – tome. A Kindle could pack all of those materials into one compact device. Never mind the capacity to replace notebooks and handouts.
• Editable – Electronic content can be manipulated. That means that professors would be able to create a truly unique experience, integrating content from multiple sources, editing out content that does not apply to the curriculum and adding their own annotations. Notes could be integrated into the text on the fly.
• Searchable – The evolution of search has revolutionized how the web works and changed how we view information. It should have an equal impact on education. I had a Chemistry teacher who said it would be absolutely ludicrous for a professional chemist to rely solely on his memory and no other resources. For that reason, he allowed us any tool that we needed during our tests. Learning should not be about memorizing information, rather it should be based on researching information, processing that information and arriving at an informed result. With traditional text books, acquiring the information is often the bottleneck. Search allows for this to happen instantaneously, allowing the crucial processing to be where the work takes place.
• Integrated – Electronic content is interactive content. It is no longer a static part of the page. By integrating with the computer, students may combine information from multiple sources, and compile it into comprehensive works. Everyone of my generation is familiar with the dreaded bibliography, likely the most painful part of any project and entirely unrelated to the actual learning at hand. It seems like the application of high quality learning materials and some basic microformats could greatly facilitate this and would in turn make a teacher’s job much easier as well.

Of course, there are ample reasons why this concept scares publishers. Most of them fall under the headers of “piracy” and the protection of a precious business model.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about working in the publishing industry is the intrinsic belief that publishing is printing. There is a fear that when the relationship with the printer is compromised, the whole thing will go down the crapper. Publishers must understand that their job is in the production of high quality vetted content that provides the best possible experience for the audience. In the world of text books, ‘printed on paper’ does not fit the bill and the conservation of that business model hurts all parties.

With regard to piracy, paper is the worst of all DRM, while duplicating it is onerous, it is not impossible (hell, it is millennia old, I think everyone grasps how to take a word from one page to another). If you must have some form of protection here, it seems that a device like the Kindle, built explicitly with this challenge in mind would be the ideal route to go, layer that with a subscription model and you add another layer of protection.

The business model for text books has been broken for some time. A product like the Kindle could help solve some core issues and provide for a better experience for the student, academic institution, and publisher alike. The question comes down to whether the publishers will stray from their stately ways and embrace a tool that can truly serve the needs of their consumer.