Dead Books

Remember a month or two back, about the public school that decided to move to all electronic content via laptops? One of the comments that was generated was that the "book publishers wouldn't like this".

Far from it. I am betting that the book publishers were in fact a part of the deal.

Academic book publishers have been busy reinventing themselves over the last few years. I remember meeting with a faculty member on a project we had both worked on, where the publisher was interested in bundling our content with their book. I kind of felt that things were backwards, as our imagery was of better quality than what is contained in most text books.

Book publishers are now into lots of things, such as competency testing for students using their content. The biggest proponent of room clickers? Book publishers who seek to bundle their courseware content with instant assessment systems.

The reason is not just to remain relevant "in this electronic age", it also to figure out ways to make more money on the content that they own. The problem with books is that they don't spoil. For the most part, content in a Harbrace from 15 years ago is still relevant, although the order of the pages may be shuffled from one year to the next.

The ultimate solution is to abandon books and go to electronic publishing means. It cost less for the publisher, but of course over the long term may cost more for schools, because you can add DRM, which in one small step changes the way we treat published content in a major way. With the onset of high resolution digital ink devices (such as Sony's Librie), it's possible to have an experience that offers many of the advantages of a book, but the ability to prevent people from viewing the content they paid for, after the expiration date has passed.

--hal