Comments on The Nookcolor and the Future of Textbooks

• Prices
• Posted by Faculty Person on October 28, 2010 at 4:30am EDT
• "Digital textbook prices will be less than paper textbooks - even with all the associated rich media. Why? Digital textbooks subvert the used textbook market, the main reason why paper textbook prices are artificially high"
  
  First: the average price of a textbook needs to take into account the used prices. Used textbooks are sold to students.
  
  Second: the price of a new textbook could also be considered new price - used price when the student sells the book.
  
  The e-books I've seen are just not a very good deal.

• Why not a laptop?
• Posted by Alex Mak , Associate Planetarium Director at The Univ. of Toledo on October 28, 2010 at 6:45am EDT
• I agree with your comments about ebooks, but I'm not sure about e-book readers. Laptops can (and do) the same thing ebook readers do. Why would students want to carry a second device since most already have a laptop?

• Not if the publishers' oligopoly continues
• Posted by Jim , Economics Professor at Lansing Community College on October 28, 2010 at 7:00am EDT
• I second Faculty Person's comments. We've been tracking this for years. If you look at total cost of ownership (purchase price - used book sale price) and consider the options of buying used to begin with, e-books from the big publishers are simply too expensive. They actually cost more than regular books.
  
  Further, I would recommend to your daughter, that if grades are important, avoid the e-book. For 3 yrs our students have had an option of e-book or printed for the same text. Those choosing e-book only consistently do less well. Our findings echo what students have said in surveys. Even when they prefer digital for everything else, 3 in 4 students still prefer printed over e-books for textbooks. A person simply does not use a textbook in the same ways the person reads a novel or popular book or magazine article or newspaper.

• Posted by Kieran Mathieson on October 28, 2010 at 8:45am EDT
• This discussion is too limited. There are other options.
  
  I'm in the final stages of an intro textbook on Web tech that follows learning science principles (unlike most!), is highly interactive, has a sophisticated feedback and reporting system built into the "book," allows students to talk to each other about content and exercises, lots of other stuff.
  
  It's a Web site, of course. It can be accessed from any device that can connect to the Web. Laptop, tablet, brain implant (available 2Q 2012), ... Not all devices are suitable, because of the nature of the interaction that best supports learning in this domain. But anything with a usable keyboard will work.
  
  Cost to students? Right now, $0. When I finish it? Maybe $20.
  
  No need for big-overhead companies, either. Individual edupreneurs or small teams can create textbooks that are higher quality - from an educational point of view (the only one that matters, IMHO) - than what's on the market now (at least in my field). At a fraction of the price.
  
  Kieran
  
  BTW, site is http://coredogs.com
  
  

• Get NOOKcolor from outside the US
• Posted by linda hemerik , CEO/founder at US Unlocked on October 28, 2010 at 10:15am EDT
• NOOKcolor only sells within the US. You can still buy it and download books from B&N from outside the US by following the easy steps in this tutorial: https://www.usunlocked.com/blog/?p=348

• The used book market is only part of the price problem
• Posted by Stephen Solomon , Director of Community at Eleven Learning, Inc. on October 28, 2010 at 10:30am EDT
• The other part of the problem is that the big textbook publishers spend an enormous amount of money in the development of big-market, hit-driven textbooks for the core and intro courses. Those costs aren't going away anytime soon, although the bite that e-books take out of the used book hit certainly will help the amortization rates. The dollars spent on the creation of the entire product portfolio, whether print-based or e-based, still have to *be* amortized, though. Until the "arms race" model that is the current state of textbook publishing changes, with things like the Nookcolor (and the Kno and the eDGe), we are still talking about changes in modality only. Not the future of textbooks.
  
  

• E-books vs. Paper Texts and A Failure of the Imagination
• Posted by Edward , Former Textbook Publisher at (used to be) McGraw-Hill on October 28, 2010 at 2:30pm EDT
• I used to work in the textbook publishing business, and I agree with a lot of the criticisms of the industry leveled here. Professors and students are justifiably angry that an industry that was once a real partner in education has become more of a nuisance than anything else in so many ways. (That is not to denigrate the ENTIRE business, but let's get real -- people are angry, and they have some right to be so).
  
  I can assure you the publishers have run the numbers and figured out how to keep their bonuses this year using a strategy for pricing that is designed to protect earnings THIS YEAR and perhaps NEXT YEAR, and that's about all the further out they can think while staying within the constraints under which the Big Suits in New York will allow them to work. (Looking at you, Terry McGraw).
  
  But this pricing strategy is arguably a failure of the imagination, and a classic (Harvard professor Clayton) Christensenian failure to recognize disruptive threats from small, massively nimbler, and myriad competitors they don't even know about yet in many cases coming at them from all angles.
  
  Their only hope for the long run (IMHO) is a more radical reduction in price that will hit the bottom line in the short run, but will freeze out competitors (Like Flat World Knowledge), disruptive technologies, and who knows what garage-made threat for long enough that the publishers have a prayer of surviving.
  
  Otherwise, they are soon doomed to play RCA's Tube to Sony's transistor.
  
  Poof! Gone.
  
  

• No Heavy Schoolbooks?
• Posted by Ed Every on October 30, 2010 at 6:15am EDT
• So what's a young guy gonna do now? I suppose "Let me carry your eReader home for you" might cut it but I doubt it.

• Posted by Cathy on November 1, 2010 at 10:00am EDT
• I've been using my Kindle as a textbook holder this year. It just broke and I'm up a creek here and ended up running out to B&N to buy my books (which were there, not in the same edition, however.) This is, officially, a problem.

• You're right, but for the wrong reasons
• Posted by Marley on November 3, 2010 at 1:00pm EDT
• It's not ereaders that will drive the etextbook market. Most aren't available on ereaders at this time--enhanced iPad textbooks are few since the translation from print to electronic for those devices is quite involved and doesn't necessarily pay off for the publishers at this point.
  Maybe in 2015 everything will be available on every platform but right now the most likely platform for an etextbook is a computer and I think most students use laptops now. Those have note-taking capabilities--the nook and kindle do not, as far as I know. The iPad is the best hybrid of portable ereader and computer so far so I expect technology will evolve in that direction; less so the direction of a device like the kindle/nook that really only does one thing.

• new tech doesn't drive publishing
• Posted by Marley on November 3, 2010 at 1:00pm EDT
• publishing should drive new tech. If you build it...you're going to have to convince publishers that it's viable and profitable and worth their investment to translate books into that platform. That's why most etextbooks are made to work on computers--that's what students have. Students dont save money with an ebook if they need to buy a new device just to use it.

• Loss of human conection
• Posted by Sandy , Reading Coach at Elementary School on November 21, 2010 at 9:30am EST
• I have been in education for 44 yearsa nd have taught from preschool through college. Currently, as a Reading Coach, my main job is to model teaching (instructional strategies) for teachers. I am still 'going' to school as well as teaching every day. The reading course I am currently taking is on-line. I really dislike this form of 'education' as we have lost the human contact - the interchange of ideas, the ah-ha moments when one person understands a new concept - not because of the instructor, but because of another student.
  My concern about moving to digital textbooks is that the long range consequence is that the "classroom" will disapper and we will have sutdetns working on their own and never have the give and take of learning that should take place. When they move into the workforce - will they know how to interact with others? Will they then have to learn how to get along with others? Will it be too late?