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  • Eleven Learning's Long Tail Textbook Strategy

    By Joshua Kim November 17, 2010 10:00 pm EST

    This week I had a chat with the founders of Eleven Learning, a Cambridge Mass based startup with ambitions to re-engineer the economics of the textbook market. Eleven Learning's goal is to create a structure in which costs are systematically engineered out of the textbook production process. The result will be not only lower costs, but a great diversity and variety of textbooks.

    The Eleven Learning guys tried to explain (by phone and e-mail) the cost factors associated with the traditional textbook market. I found their explanation fascinating, and will do my best to synthesize how textbook economics work. Please let me know where I've gotten the story wrong (and any mistakes in the particulars below are my own responsibility).

    Textbook costs are driven by two factors, the "plate" or "plant" costs and the "PPB" (paper, print, and bind) costs.

    The editorial and production costs are included in the "plate." Editorial costs include all the work that goes into recruiting the author, developing the manuscript, editing, peer review, copyedit, proofread, supplements, class-testing, project management, permission clearance and much else. For a "mid-market" textbook, the editorial costs can easily hit $100,000 (although there is much variation).

    Production costs involve everything related to producing the final manuscript that will be turned over to the printer. This work covers design, layout, composition, art creation and management, permissions clearance etc. All this can work can easily swallow another $75,000 or so.

    The PPB side (paper, print, and binding) includes all the costs related to the physical printing of the book (paper, binding, shipping, packaging etc.). Costs vary enormously depending on the quality of the paper, the size of the print run, and the market power of the publisher.

    The development of a new textbook can easily cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The publishers then price their textbooks to earn a profit margin of about 65%, a necessary markup because of the systems high fixed costs and the fact that they make zero money on used textbook sales. The result is expensive textbooks, and a limited number of titles because of the high numbers that need to be sold to make a positive return on the production investment.

    The traditional textbook market seems to follow many of the basic rules of media and publishing, relying on a few mega-hits to pay for textbooks that never earn back their initial investment. Textbooks with little chance of succeeding (and I'm not sure what constitutes success - 25 thousand units a year?), never make it into production.

    As I understand Eleven Learning's model, they plan to pursue a long tail strategy of textbook publishing by eliminating many of the costs associated with the development of the textbook. They hope to move much of the editorial costs towards a community model, embracing an open publishing and crowd-sourced model to guide the production and quality control aspects of manuscript development. According to the Eleven Learning website, they are developing a platform that allows " …crowdsourced commenting tools [that] will enable you to upload your manuscript and invite reviewers to comment and suggest improvements. The feedback comes directly from those whose opinions matter most: potential adopters of your book". They also believe they can trim the per-unit costs of textbooks by starting with a digital and print-on-demand model, eliminating the high fixed legacy costs of a paper based publishing model.

    The real test in any startup is not the ideas (although I think Eleven Learning has some great ideas) but the quality of execution. We have not seen the platform that will enable a textbook to be written with immediate and relevant feedback from a specific academic discipline. Nor do we know if Eleven Learning will succeed in developing a community large and active enough to bring this wisdom of crowds to the editing of a textbook. It is not clear to me how much of the professional editorial costs can be reduced without sacrificing quality. The danger seems to be producing textbooks of uneven quality, and therefore making it difficult to trust the content. A sort of Wikipedia problem.

    I'm happy, however, that a startup is taking on the problem of textbook production - and not restricting themselves to the delivery side. Sure, Eleven Learning will probably produce an iPad app - but the innovations they hope to introduce are more fundamental to the textbook industry. We need more startups like Eleven Learning.

    Do you know of other startups in the educational technology and publishing space that should be on our radar? What advice would you give to Eleven Learning?

Go to comments (5) »
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Comments on Eleven Learning's Long Tail Textbook Strategy

  • thoughts
  • Posted by Laura , Editor at Nelson Education on November 18, 2010 at 8:30am EST
  • I agree that textbooks need to evolve. But in my 20+ years of experience producing textbooks, one of the trickiest issues to deal with is peer review. Part of the development process is deciding which comments to accept and which to reject, while still maintaining a book's integrity. A successfully managed process results in a book with its own personality; an unsuccessfully managed process ends up with a book that tries to be everything to everyone. Book-by-committee can, in many cases, end up by smoothing out all the rough, and potentially most interesting, edges - vanilla ice cream, when what might inspire and engage students most is actually Rocky Road, with all the bits and pieces mixed in. Authorial voice and argument have their place in textbooks, not just in scholarly monographs.

    It is entirely possible that Eleven Learning's model accommodates this, but I'm curious to know more.

    Laura
  • Voice
  • Posted by Ken McElrath , Professor of Art at Covenant College on November 18, 2010 at 11:30am EST
  • I agree with Laura's comment about voice and argument. As a teacher of art history, I cannot imagine working from a crowd-sourced text unless all content is "hung" on a voice/argument armature. Great care needs to be taken to avoid the Milan Cathedral of textbooks, or "textbook by committee". On the other hand, just as the Milan Cathedral led to the waning of Gothic architecture to make room for Renaissance architecture, perhaps the Eleven Learning experiment will pave the way for something completely new are refreshing to follow.
  • The 11L Peersourcing Process
  • Posted by Stephen Solomon , Director of Community at Eleven Learning on November 18, 2010 at 1:15pm EST
  • Laura and Ken, thank you for the insightful comments. As a longtime textbook editor myself, I couldn't agree more that a sophisticated peer review process can be a tough thing to manage, and that the proclivity toward "textbook by committee" can sometimes be the result of even the most well-managed reviews. So let me try to clarify a couple of things about our peersourcing process.

    1) There will always be a "guiding hand" involved in the peersourcing process. Who that guiding hand is will depend on what kind of project is being developed. In most cases, the author and a professional editor will be involved, at the bare minimum; we think that the community-based model can scale to leverage additional talent as necessary (subject matter expertise, instructional design, etc.) as it matures. Authorial voice is very important to us, and it will always be a part of the process. At the same time, we think that we can complement and enhance it by harmonizing it with the voice of the community. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course. It's a non-trivial exercise, and we realize that. But we think it can be done.

    2) We also think we can mitigate the "textbook by committee" scenario by really opening up what has long been a process that essentially takes place in a vacuum. Our peer review process allows reviewers to go far beyond just offering insight; it allows them to contribute at the manuscript level, and to see what others are contributing, in real time on shared documents. It is a process of collaboration which, in the future, will allow reviewers and community members to provide weighted feedback on changes, additions, deletions, and addition of content. This will allow the author, editor, and others to prioritize the manuscript development.

    We're currently running private beta testing of the peersourcing process on a couple of manuscripts before we start actually building tools for our community. Anyone who would like to participate, comment, or offer feedback is welcome to do so by emailing me at ssolomon@elevenlearning.com to request an invite.

  • An author's thoughts
  • Posted by David Lippman , Math Faculty / author at Pierce College Ft Steilacoom on November 18, 2010 at 1:15pm EST
  • As an author using Eleven Learning, my understanding is that Eleven Learning’s plan is to allow the wisdom of crowds to *suggest* changes, not directly make the changes, which should prevent what you call the “Wikipedia problem.” Yes, not having professional editorial review might make my book a little rougher around the edges, but as long as it’s readable, I don’t think most students care about polish when they’re saving $150. Leaving the final editorial decisions in the author’s hands should prevent the rampant “mainstreaming” of books, where all commercial books converge towards the middle of the market in an effort to be appeal to all. Well, at least as long as the author, like me, doesn’t really care if everyone likes their book.
  • Interested; Industrial Applications?
  • Posted by George Cooper , Principal on November 24, 2010 at 5:00am EST
  • I thoroughly enjoyed reading the post and comments. My initial reactions prior to reading the comments were similar to those then voiced: how to avoid editing content into the middle of the distribution.. yet how helpful it might be to expand review past the "usual suspects" of peer review.

    We're engaged in industrial training and curriculum development, and I see potential advantages, actually, in both areas: we ("industry") suffer from a lack of consistent fundamental requirements while struggling with how to address facility specialized needs. Opening the review process - predicated upon being able to draw those into the process who both need it and can provide technical critique - would be crucial to success.

    You've certainly gotten me thinking. Interesting.

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