Week #5 – Activity 3: Digital Textbooks (Publish This)

To stay alive as a publisher in this market, I will need to consider interactivity and costs. The textbook needs to transform from a dust-collecting, static, consumable into an innovative digital product. The main challenge I have to contend with is the dramatic shift in the supply chain. I need to advertise to create a demand for digital textbooks and prove myself better than the emerging new competitors (that may be those who are skipping the middle man!). The new digital textbooks need to have functions in searching and interactivity with multimedia for learning support. They need to have supported learning capability, reliable technical support, user-friendly interfaces, and teacher training aid. They should be colourful, incredibly engaging, intuitive, and user-friendly on all devices. Additionally, classrooms need infrastructure with electrical plugs for devices and enough devices for all students. I am concerned that we will need to lower the prices of digital books because schools will need to pay rental fees each year and won’t be able to pay the full textbook price. The only way I see to do this is to lower the cost. The contributors need to be paid, but we can cut costs by incorporating age-appropriate advertising into our digital product.

To remain relevant as a publisher, I would look to the design elements of print to make sure that my paper product remained top of the line. Nowadays, with virtually everything available online, print is seen as a work of art. Magazines, journals and books that become popular are those that offer something that online text cannot. The artistic element and nostalgia of print is resurfacing among many communities. There is a certain pleasure that comes from working on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil. I would ensure that my print was full of engaging elements that could be added to by the viewer. I would make sure that beyond content, the fundamental focus of my publishing company was to create works that are aesthetically pleasing. My publishing company would aim for coffee table worthy magazines. While content is available online, an excellent design presence and well reputable print technique is something I would strive for to stay on trend.

Professional “looking” content is all over the internet, but professional “quality” content is limited. Published content is quality content and people are aware of that. So while “Free” and available content poses a risk to the publishing industry, that can be used as a stepping stone. Publishers can create a platform for promoting free content while they add the quality to the content that is being featured on their platform. Let us take the example of newspaper and magazines. Along with paper publishing, most of these provide a free web edition. This generates “presence”. They are now available to a user base that is otherwise way off limits. So endorsements follow. Likewise, educational publishing industry can promote educational content. When they gather a certain recognition, schools and institutions are bound to endorse them. A nominal subscription fee to access all content can be added.(Example Kindle Unlimited). In short with the digital revolution, all traditional ways need to be evolved. No industry can afford to make them unreachable by not participating in this digital wave. The Internet should not be a competition, but a stepping stone for the publishing industry.

To stay in business as a traditional publisher, there are three things that I would focus on: appropriate markets, customer niche, and simplicity of print. For appropriate markets, it would be crucial to focus on developing countries or regions that might not have access or the social acceptability of using digital content as textbooks. It would be hard pressed to try selling a digital text to people in a developing country. Customer niches are also important, because some people simply prefer black text on white pages. They prefer the feel, the smell, the texture of a book rather than touching a screen. Many used bookstores still continue to be a booming business in eastern Asia for these reasons. And finally, simple print can help cut costs and stay competitive. No need for colour or complicated images in the text itself. A math textbook can just have problems and formulas – nothing fancy. The simplicity will cut ridiculous printing costs.

As a traditional textbook publisher, I would be making a strong effort to outsource content creation and distribution in an effort to reduce costs, and to use revenue in a way that is sustainable in the digital age. In order to outsource content creation and distribution, as a textbook publisher, I would transition to creating, and maintaining a digital learning/teaching platform. The goal of this platform should be to amass educational media of all sorts from videos, articles, interviews, and even quizzes and tests from willing contributors, and allowing free access to students, teachers, or other 3rd parties. As discussed in the OER, any free platform should be funded by advertisements, and this one should be no different. The resulting revenue can be shared between the maintainers of the platform, and the contributors, which will encourage contributors to put in high quality work. If YouTube, and Wikipedia had a baby, this would be the learning platform a traditional textbook publisher would try to create. The digital learning platform combines many of the selling points offered by the start-ups shown in the OER, and also with digital textbooks and also cures many of the pain points in today’s textbook industry. Educators who are capable of creating good content, which can consist of learning activities, lesson plans, diagrams, notes, videos, podcasts, lab instructions, interviews, etc, would illicit the largest visits and usage, which will help the platform generate additional revenue that can then be shared with the contributor. By amassing educational digital content, the platform can serve as an ever changing collection of teaching resources for teachers, one which can be kept up to date with minimal costs to the “textbook” publisher. With content creation and distribution costs outsourced to contributors all around the world, the textbook publisher can channel funds towards building out the technological framework required for the digital platform, and towards a team of curators who will parse through submitted content to check for relevancy. This platform, if properly implemented, can be a permanent resource for teachers and students that does not need to be replaced every couple of years, or even if the curriculum were to shift. Teachers can simply visit the platform to choose activities, worksheets, or assessment pieces they’d like, or pull pieces together to form their own lessons. For the learner, this digital learning platform becomes a one stop source for any textbook or learning resource needed, just like watching YouTube, if a student finds one learning resource difficult to follow, they are free to look up resources from a different source, or “channel”.

As a publisher of educational textbooks, there are several value added propositions.

1. School divisions As a publisher, we work with expert educators in each province to ensure that textbooks and teacher resources are aligned to provincial curriculum. The purchase of your digital subscription is not the end of our relationship. Our IT integration service team will work collaboratively with your IT implementation department in ensuring your IT infrastructure and processes is e-textbook ready. The subscription rates or one-time purchase subscriptions are also reduced as your district increases their order. We also guarantee that from the time of purchase for 5 years, we will maintain the technology to the standards that you purchased the digital textbook. Administrators will not need to worry that every year they will need to upgrade their hardware.

2. Teachers Teachers have access to recorded training webinars and our training team will provide ongoing webinars for teachers as collective needs arise. We are pleased to announce that teachers will belong to the broader community of teachers who are using the same digital textbook with their learners. This community shares lessons and tests. Teacher can learn from each other.

3. Learners. Last but not least, the value added proposition for learners, in addition to the embedded multimedia interaction, is the ability to participate in the update process of the digital textbooks. We are living in a participatory culture and as a publisher, we recognize that learners provide different perspectives on the content. Every year students can submit articles, videos, audios, which will be highlighted in new editions or supplementary resources. It is a chance for learners to become published themselves!

Publishers for Educational textbooks must be fully aware that the traditional model for developing, publishing and delivering books for use in the classroom is dying, but I believe they have some time to experiment with new models before abandoning their current practices. As much as some educators and students would like to access a digital multi-modal teaching resource, it will take some time to turn the Titanic that is the publishing industry of textbooks (even if they wanted to). In recent years, I have noticed they have been offering additional interactive resources to support their traditional texts. I think the switch is inevitable but the delivery model is still undefined and those in the purchasing role that don’t have a reliable, robust infrastructure to handle this new approach to learning may feel more comfortable with a physical resource.

If I was given the chance to lead a major publishing firm or even one of the smaller companies, I would discuss the obvious with the board of executives - digital textbooks are the future and print based texts are on the decline. The point that I would like to make to the company is that we would need to create more of an enhanced digital textbook that could utilize virtual and augmented reality. Using these concepts, the digital textbooks would allow for the diagrams and images to come to life. This would provide an enhanced learning element.

In the role of a traditional publisher I would....panic! Seriously, it would call for some drastic measures and out of the box thinking to survive. The one thing a traditional publisher has at their disposal is an established network to the supply and demand ends of the market. They know the authors and the buyers and can leverage this to their advantage. Rather than focusing on the dizzying array of media and options that are available and are changing daily, I would focus on the needs of educators and students. What do they want and need and how can that be met by my company. I would try and focus on building an adaptive and flexible product line that is compatible with many of the mainstream technologies. How can I assist my authors and content providers in creating linkages between what they are building and the content that exists online already? How can I assist them in promoting and marketing the material they are creating and does my company have the capacity to house, market, promote and customize their product. I think there are some interesting options in allowing the user to create a collage of materials and either print or access the materials online as they need or wish to do so. Perhaps as a service, I could adapt from a traditional publisher to a digital source that provides clients with the opportunity to access and use a wide array of materials and resources for their use in the classroom and online learning environments. Publishing would match education and online consumer of information in that it would provide materials on a 'as needed, on-demand' basis and the user would define their needs and use of the information and resources for their own use -customized publishing as a subscriber to our services.

How will publishers survive in the 21st century? Publishers have few strengths upon which to sustain their business and numerous threats. Readers, for the most part, still want books that are published because publishers have a reputation for choosing authors carefully and using expert editing to ensure a consistent quality. They also have the advantage of having a marketing team that is dedicated to selling as many books as possible in as many places as possible. But today, this is where their advantage ends, and if they wish to be sustainable they will need to reinvent themselves in ways beyond the printed text. https://youtu.be/MK2qOaPZD3Q The current threat to publishing companies are self publishing, especially in the ebook market where self published authors can easily publish and sell their books at a lower price, the diminishing span of attention of the reader and the increasing desire for multimedia. The quality of self published books may be questionable, but when those books are cheap, people will buy them (Ribbonfish, 2016). Even in the absence of a quality assurance team, self published authors hire their own editor to boost the quality and they can rely on reviews on sites like Amazon to convince new readers to buy their books. Increasingly, talented writers are turning to self publishing because they can forgo the painful publisher rejections and can make more money per sale and ultimately make a sustainable living if their books are well written. There are a growing number of self published authors for example on Amazon who are being paid more than $100,000 per year (McGregor, 2015). From personal experience, my first published book with Elsevier, The Canadian Paramedic, sold over 20,000 copies, but I received a flat fee of $5,000 as a first time author. In 2015 I self published a couple of workbooks (no publisher will touch a workbook without an accompanying textbook) and sold almost 1,000 books in the first year and will likely sell over 2,000 this year. One of the selling points of these workbooks is that every page has a QR code that links the reader to a video that speaks to the content of the book. The making of a blended analogue-digital book may be a solution for publishers to give consumers the multimedia they crave. These sales of self published books are increased with advertising that’s free. Self publishers can easily cross promote their products but creating blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube Channels that all feed into their products. https://youtu.be/ZWmG_GULDG0 For publishers to remain competitive I believe they need to look more closely at the self publishing industry to see how they might be able to reduce their costs, streamline their processes and put more money into the pockets of the authors. In the ebook side of the industry, sales are not declining as publishers might have us think (Ingram, 2015). In fact, as more and more consumers experience the benefit of cheaper books and the ability to carry hundreds of books on a portable device, the popularity and sales of ebooks will continue to rise. Publishers need to recognize that you can no longer print a book and not have a corresponding ebook and audiobook. They will also need to include multimedia - for example, interviews with the author, images of scenes related to the book and short video clips relevant to the story. On the elearning side of the publishing industry, multimedia and interactivity, despite the publishing industry’s scepticism will ultimately determine the fate of the traditional publishing establishment (Costanzo, 2014). In summary, in order to survive, the publishing industry will need to do it better than ever before and better than anyone else. References Costanzo, (2014). The Real Reason Enhanced Ebooks Haven't Taken Off (Or, Evan ... Retrieved June 12, 2016, from http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/the-real-reason-enhanced-ebooks-havent-taken-off-or-evan-schnittman-was-right-for-the-most-part/. Ingram, M., (2015). No, E-book Sales Aren't Falling Despite What Publishers are Saying - Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/ebook-sales/. McGregor, J., (2015). Amazon Pays $450,000 A Year To This Self-Published Writer - Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2015/04/17/mark-dawson-made-750000-from-self-published-amazon-books/. Ribbonfish (2016). Has Self Publishing Given The Industry Something To Think About? Ribbonfish. Retrieved from http://www.ribbonfish.co.uk/blog/is-self-publishing-a-threat-to-the-traditional-publishing-industry/.