E-textbook sales surge, survey uncovers drivers

Thanks to Mariana McCulley for the heads up on a new press release from Ingram Digital. According to the release, Ingram Digital saw a 400% increase in e-Textbook sales this semester over 2007 sales. Of particular interest in the press release is some of the data they share from a recent study. In Q2, Ingram Digital surveyed more than 600 of its e-book users to uncover the key drivers behind their decision to switch to digital. Results revealed that cost, convenience, and interactivity were the top three factors contributing to students' decision to purchase e-Textbooks.

News and studies like this provide some important insights into the future direction of digital course materials from the consumer/student perspective. It will be interesting to see what the fall sales numbers look like compared to this spring. By this fall, the amount of digital inventory for textbooks is expected to increase signficantly -- and will continue to do so through 2009. I would expect the main textbook publishers (which represent over 80-85% of the industry) will all have their frontlists available in digital format for sale and distribution by sometime in 2009 if not sooner. Inventory has been a barrier to adoption in the past. Other forthcoming developments in the industry will address some of the cost and convenience factors as well.

CourseSmart partners with Ingram Digital Ventures

Just a quick note today --

In a non-surprising, but notable news release last week, CourseSmart announced Ingram Digital Ventures (IDV) will provide the platform for delivering their e-textbook collection. For anyone not familiar with educational publishing these days, CourseSmart is a company founded by six of the largest higher education textbook publishers (now five, since Cengage bought Hougton Mifflin). IDV is a division within Ingram, and provides a range of services -- VitalSource and Lightning Source being among perhaps the more common IDV companies familiar to college stores.

The partnership adds to the scalability of the e-textbook solution CourseSmart will be able to provide to the market. One interesting aspect of this arrangement is that IDV will "provide a customized e-book reader application to enrich CourseSmart eTextbooks with interactive functionalities." Given that another IDV company, VitalSource, is in the same business, it is a curious, or at least interesting, development. It will be interesting to see how similar or different the two e-reader environments are at the end of the day. The end result should provide benefit to consumers.

Hot off the press...

Okay, I am holding a couple news stories back to post Friday (when else). However, the following news story just came across my scan and it is worth sharing. There have been a couple interesting news stories out of the London Book Fair this week, but this press release in particular caught my eye. The piece describes the experiments of a UK bookseller (John Smith & Son) with digital for three UK universities-- and their plans to expand offerings next fall. The passage of particular interest here:

Outcomes from the trial revealed an untapped demand for textbooks that fit today’s students’ lifestyles while meeting their academic needs. “In some instances, the adoption rate of the digital version of a required textbook was as high as 30 percent of the students enrolled in the course,” commented Alan Leitch, John Smith’s marketing director. “The John Smith experiment demonstrated that students are eager to embrace e-books that truly contribute to their learning experience.”

The project was supported by VitalSource, an Ingram Digital Ventures company. Just another example though of a strengthening trend towards digital adoption by students.