Much Lighter and Cheaper Digital Textbooks on iPads

I posted on the coming (and I predicted explosive) growth of digital textbooks last year on my Publishing/Writing Blog and here on this blog.

This post gives the latest advances ... including popularity, growth and forecast figures.

Show me the money! AND the savings and convenience to students ... These e-textbooks (some with interactive, complex content) are probably the greatest invention since the vibrator :)

Three companies: Inkling (a startup stand alone), CourseSmart (owned by textbook publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, MacMillan and Cengage) and Kno (an Education software company) are the main players in the digital textbook field to date.

Details here by Jefferson Graham in USA Today:

Matt MacInnis believes college textbooks are heavy, expensive and outdated. That's why he decided to reinvent them as a multimedia experience for the iPad.


"We're trying to bring textbooks forward to the 21st century," he says.

San Francisco-based Inkling is the start-up he formed to bring next-generation textbooks to the iPad. Chapters of such educational tomes can be purchased for $2.99 a pop at the iTunes App Store. In early tests, students rave. Several colleges have jumped on board, using Inkling textbooks with college-mandated iPads for fall courses.

Investors like what they see. Inkling today will announce a second round of funding for the company, $17 million from Tenaya Capital, Jafco Ventures and Sequoia Capital. This follows the initial funding from Sequoia and others, including publishers McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

"This shows we're trying to scale the business in a big way," says MacInnis. "We're hoping it shows just how substantial our vision is."

Some $4.5 billion worth of textbooks were sold in 2010, according to the Association of American Publishers. Education consultant Xplana expects digital textbooks to represent 3% of sales in 2011, growing to 44% by 2017.

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States Adopt Digital Textbooks--What Took Them So Long?

For the un-initiated (of which I was a member until very recently) many states have what they call adoption state review boards for approving educational and instructional materials/textbooks for use in their school systems.

Well, these 'know-what's-best-for-you' review boards have finally begun to approve digital formatted textbooks as legitimate...primarily to save costs in this currently ruptured economy...but, hopefully, they also realize the new digital formats encourage student interaction and engagement with more complex content.

Cool insights from "Insights from the Editor" at Simba Media Intelligence:

In an effort to increase student engagement with content while decreasing spending on textbooks, adoption state review boards are incorporating digital programs into their strategy. According to 2010 National Textbook Adoption Scorecard and 2011 Outlook, a new report published by Simba Information, the lingering recession is pushing adoption boards to reconsider how they define the textbook in the 21st century.

Expanding the adoption process to include digital programs is a growing trend in the adoption states, first pioneered in West Virginia. Motivated by anticipated cost savings, various adoption boards have purchased more digital materials than in previous years; however, they have not yet begun to replace textbooks.

Quite often, there is confusion in the relationship between print textbooks and their digital counterparts. Some people incorrectly assume that they compete with each other, when in fact, they are the same product offered through a different medium.

Top publishers, such as Pearson’s enVisionMATH and Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt’s Journeys, offer a multimedia-formatted digital program that mixes a full digital path with print textbooks. Simba expects publishers to expand digital offerings, especially for reading, in their bids for Texas adoptions next year.

Next year may well be the strongest outlet for digital programs in textbook adoption states we will see.

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