Interactive art history textbooks

An interesting posting on Fast Company last week discussed a new interactive art reference website known as smARThistory. The site is an ongoing effort by Beth Harris, MoMA's director of digital learning, and Steven Zucker, graduate-studies dean at the Fashion Institute of Technology to create an engaging "web-book" to enhance traditional art history courses.

The project began in 2005 after years of dissatisfaction with large and expensive art history textbooks and has evolved into an intuitive reference website that features an interactive timeline with images that link to podcasts and screen-casts. The podcasts and screen-casts are recorded by Harris and Zucker and include spontaneous discussion about the works of art, which they have found to be more compelling to students than monologue. On the website, Harris and Zucker explain that their efforts are "a first step toward understanding how art history can fit into the new collaborative culture created by web 2.0 technologies."

The posting on Fast Company goes on to discuss how virtual textbooks like smARThistory could greatly benefit other disciplines such as math and science with the use of animated illustrations. As we move towards a more collaborative learning culture and more content becomes free via the web, stores must consider their role in this change.

Blogroll please...

A couple updates to the blog roll. Teleread moved its blog a couple weeks back, so I updated the link. And then, alas, I will refer readers to yet another blog of interest on the topic of digital content. This one is thedigitalist by the folks over at Pam Macmillan publishing. It is a very good blog with interesting postings. Here is a quote from one recent posting that gets to the question I posed to everyone yesterday:

Quite frequently I hear people talking about the future. They will argue and pontificate about when the new digital book, the new digital fiction, the new digital culture will arrive. In the world of digital publishing futurologists abound as we all try and work out what will happen next, even as we are still working out what’s just happened. The thing is that digital books and digital fiction and the like are already here. The die is, by and large, cast, and if we are still talking about the future it’s either because the new forms so little resemble the old we can’t recognise them or they are so familiar as to have slipped under the radar.

A couple of examples. A few years ago we had these things in our cars and houses called maps. They were, if you recall, like large books with lots of pictures of how to get from A to B. Often they were quite confusing and the source of many arguments but they pretty much worked. People had a nice sideline in publishing them. Likewise we had these big books known as Encyclopedias, great Enlightenment projects to capture the totality of man kinds knowledge, preferably in expensively produced multi-volume hardback editions.

Now we have Google Maps and sat nav, Wikipedia and, ahem, Google Knols. There is a reasonably obvious equivalence between the products. They resemble one another albeit with crucial evolutionary differences, but perform the same function. The content is roughly the same, the generation of that content and the interface is radically different. The point is no one is talking about what maps and encyclopedias will be like in the future. We know that already.

Yet digital fiction and the book is still surrounded by rampant speculation. However I think all the elements are already here, as with maps and encyclopedias. Firstly we have the ebook. Digital is meant to be good precisely because it breaks with print; however I believe the success of the ebook is because it resembles print. People don’t necessarily want a radical break. They want the same but easier.

For the full posting, check out the blog. Interesting stuff there.

A question...

I had a conversation recently which bothered me on several levels. One of those levels will be the punchline to a talk I am giving later this week for ICBA. But at the moment, I am thinking about another question that has been rolling around in that apparently empty head of mine... I was recently asked if ebooks are a marketing solution to a problem for which there is no demand?

After giving this quite a bit of thought, I think this is in fact the wrong question. I think the question should be more something along the lines of "are current e-book solutions a poor substitute for what is really wanted?" After Henry Ford created the automobile, he reportedly quipped that if he had asked people what they really wanted, they would have said faster horses. There is another quote, who's author I do not know, that goes something like, lightbulbs did not result from the continuous improvement of candles. In other words, sometimes breakthrough advances or radical changes in a space result in new technologies that are so different from what we remember, that they are hard to predict. But, when the right technology comes onto the scene, there can be a more or less rapid transition from the old technology to the new.

People may be skeptical of e-books, arguing that there is no market demand for such content or devices, yet look at the success of Stanza -- an e-reader application for the iPhone. At the TOC conference last week they reported that in less than seven months after their creation they had over 1.3 million downloads of their reader across 60 countries and had downloaded more than 5 million books in twelve languages. Not bad for a platform where the CEO of the company said not long ago that no one reads anymore. Maybe reading the "old way" has become like using candles before the lightbulb.

Any thoughts?

Lessons from the music industry...

This is a reference to an old post on a good blog -- Seth Godin's. Seth's site has a lot of useful material, including a fair number of posts about digital content. The post referenced here is one Seth did just over a year ago on lessons learned from the music industry's shift to digital.

The most important lesson he notes (lesson 0, because it is so important) is:

0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.

Given some of the new data from a survey we just completed in the college store industry and the transition to digital, more stores might want to pay heed to Seth's message.

SONY markets notebooks with mannequins

This posting is a bit of a deviation from the traditional posting here, but marketing of new technologies is part of the innovation and adoption process, and this one is quite different, so I thought it would make a good weekend posting.

There was a piece in the Event Marketer this week on a new Sony campaign for the latest Sony notebook. The goal is to mix style with technology -- or technology with fashion. It continues the stream of observation by Sony that if people experience a well-designed technology they are more likely to adopt it -- and this is true of the Sony reader as much as their other devices.

In the marketing event, people had three opportunities to interact with the live mannequins. First, the mannequins walked through the event location presenting the device in a passive way. Second, they paused and revealed the product in action. Third, the mannequins froze in place, allowing consumers to explore the capabilities by taking the devices into their own hands.

Interesting approach to experiential and event marketing.

How The New York Times could cut their printing costs in half

The folks at the Silicon Alley Insider came up with a very interesting comparison to show just how expensive printing the newspaper can be. The posting notes that it currently costs twice as much to print and deliver The New York Times as it would to send each subscriber a brand new Amazon Kindle. The posting describes the calculation and explains that the printing costs could actually be even higher than the numbers used in the comparison. When you consider this comparison along with relevant factors such as the economy and environmental concerns, its makes you wonder how far off the tipping point for e-readers really is.


BTW -- Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The Kindle2

Okay, everyone else is posting on the Kindle2, so we might as well too. As anticipated, Amazon introduced the second generation Kindle at a news conference in NYC on Monday. According to the news release, the Kindle 2 has several enhancements over the first generation Kindle including: slimmer design, 25% longer battery life, faster display with 16 shades of gray, seven times more storage, instant dictionary lookup, and a text-to-speech feature that converts words on the page to spoken words.

There have been mixed reactions to the text-to-speech feature and the Authors Guild among others are questioning if the feature is legal. In an article appearing in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Aiken, Authors Guild executive director explained, "They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.” While Drew Herdener Amazon spokesman said, “These are not audiobooks. Text to speech is simply software that runs on devices and reads content.” Most other postings out there appear to agree with Amazon on this one. I think a pair of postings on Techdirt capture the perspective well, and with some humor. Although, once computers get good enough to read in a lifelike way, with proper intonation and interpretation, there could be an issue -- at that point, what is an audiobook? Maybe there is something of a true legal question here that should be addressed before the e-audiobook industry of the future is replaced. (Not saying that it should or shouldn't be replaced, only that if that industry wants to survive future technologies, it would be logical for it to take this development a little more seriously).

As for the future, Jeff Bezos commented on the ultimate goal for the Kindle and its library saying, “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language in under 60 seconds." Hmm... I wonder if instant translation to different languages by the device in the future is also a violation the Author's Guild will be concerned about?

Cornell University Library to offer more than 80,000 titles via POD

According to a recent press release, Cornell University Library plans to increase its print-on-demand offerings to more than 80,000 titles by the end of 2009. The additional titles will be added to the roughly 6,000 items currently available on Amazon.com. For the past two years, the library has been working with Microsoft to digitize the books which include many out of print titles.

Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies explained the initiative, "Although demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value. This initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books - they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf."

This announcement provides another example of the recent increase in the number of libraries offering digitized collections. As discussed in a previous posting, the movement to digital creates some new opportunities for libraries and college stores to work together. The creation of on campus partnerships could provide print-on-demand opportunities for the universities rather than Amazon.

How literature is evolving in the digital age

An interesting article from Time magazine takes a look at how literature is evolving in the digital age. The article discusses a number of topics that factor into the change including the outdated business models that have guided the industry for years, the increasing popularity of self-publishing, and how for the first time in history, novels are becoming detached from the dollar with the rise of fan fiction websites that carry free novels written by amateurs. Additionally, the author provides his take on what the publishing future will look like. He explains,

"More books, written and read by more people, often for little or no money, circulating in a wild diversity of forms, both physical and electronic... If readers want to pay for the old-school premium package, they can get their literature the old-fashioned way: carefully selected and edited, and presented in a bespoke, art-directed paper package. But below that there will be a vast continuum of other options: quickie print-on-demand editions and electronic editions for digital devices, with a corresponding hierarchy of professional and amateur editorial selectiveness. (Unpaid amateur editors have already hit the world of fan fiction, where they're called beta readers.) The wide bottom of the pyramid will consist of a vast loamy layer of free, unedited, Web-only fiction, rated and ranked YouTube-style by the anonymous reading masses." He goes on to add that fiction will be, "Like fan fiction, it will be ravenously referential and intertextual in ways that will strain copyright law to the breaking point. Novels will get longer--electronic books aren't bound by physical constraints--and they'll be patchable and updatable, like software.

Recently we have begun to see some examples of publishers moving to pure e-formats for selected content and finding ways to monetize the new way of releasing fiction. In the future, we could see consumers shift away from content abundance and rely on respectable publishers to do the editing and presentation. In turn, this could drive publishers back to their core competence of editing and compiling information - leaving the delivery, formatting, and consumer choice of access to other companies and technologies.

Google, and Amazon, and Apple -- OH MY!

There were several interesting articles in the New York Times in the past week of interest to content producers and retailers. Three large companies -- Google, Amazon, and Apple -- are shaping up to be top competitors in the future e-book marketplace. Here is a synopsis of the articles from the past week:

Both Google and Amazon announced increases in their digital offerings to include e-books formatted for mobile phones. According to the article from the New York Times, Amazon is currently working to make Kindle titles available for mobile use while Google has just introduced a new mobile version of the Google Book Search initiative. A posting from the Inside Google Book Search blog explains that over 1.5 million of the public domain books that were scanned for Google Book Search have been made into a mobile version for viewing on iPhones or phones that use Google’s Android operating system. Additionally, the New York Times article provides some commentary from analysts on whether mobile phones will take the place of dedicated e-Readers. The analysts note that they do not see this occurring in the near future due to the small size of the screen, the backlighting present while reading, and the shorter battery life, however, as mobile devices become more advanced, consumers may be willing to give up some quality in exchange for convenience and cost.

There were two other articles in The New York Times this week, one about Google and the other about Apple but both about a similar topic – these companies are changing content production (and potentially retail) as we know it. By digitizing library collections across the world, Google is gaining the ability to offer books that no one else can thereby solidifying its dominant position in the market. Meanwhile, Apple continues to dominate the music industry having just reached an agreement with the labels to allow flexible pricing in exchange for DRM free music. So what does this mean for the future?

Color and Flexible e-book displays

The Economist recently had an interesting story that is a must-read for those interested in e-reader technology. They report that HP Labs, Arizona State, and E Ink have been successful at producing flexible electronic paper in long rolls -- bendy electronic paper, that can display words and images, and perhaps eventually replace paper books, newspapers and magazines. The new screens are both low-weight and have low power consumption. Early uses are expected to be in the military, who funded the project -- for purposes such as maps and receiving information. Consumer applications are likely a few years away.

The article goes on to talk about the two key barriers to the technology being successful -- a lack of color, and a refresh rate that enables moving images. But the new technology is substantively lighter, more reliable in production and use, and consumes less power -- all factors that will lead to the new technology surplanting the old. The breakthrough reported in the Economist article, though, is the ability to mass-produce flexible displays -- greatly reducing the cost. The article concludes with comments on different technologies that are emerging that may make color displays possible in the future.

More news on e-books

We are at TOC this week... so here are some other postings and articles of note in the news...

A British blog's take on the coming of e-books.

An early view of the Kindle 2 -- to be released tomorrow.

Another sign of change -- article reports that searches for e-books up by 100%.

More news is likely to follow in the week ahead.

Publishing industry in 2009

After conducting a year long study on digital publishing, industry analyst Steve Paxhia of The Gilbane Group has identified the top five trends that could affect the publishing industry in 2009. His predictions are in line with the trends that we have seen gaining ground in recent months. He predicts: an increase in custom product offerings especially in the educational textbook segment, an increase in print-on-demand capabilities due to cost effectiveness and progressing production quality, and an increase in the premium digital products offered by traditional publishers.

We look forward to the full report due out later this month titled, “Digital Platforms and Technologies for Book Publishers: Implementations Beyond eBook.”

HarperCollins introduces video books for download

Innovation surrounding books, and particularly e-books, continues. An interesting twist on this innovation comes from an article in this week’s Wall Street Journal. On Tuesday, HarperCollins introduced their first video book for download and plans to introduce more if consumers show interest. The video book is Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?” and features the author, speaking about concepts from the book. The video is available through Amazon’s digital store for download to computers and mobile devices. Brian Murray, Chief Executive of HarperCollins explained the initiative, "We’re looking to create new revenue streams. There is a tremendous amount of search and discovery of video on the Web. Some consumers won't spend the money or invest hours in reading a book, but they will watch a 23-minute video." Jeff Jarvis is a scheduled speaker at next week’s TOC conference, where we expect he will talk more about this experiment in video books.

On a semi-related note, HarperStudio, a newer division of HarperCollins that experiments with new publishing models and technology, recently launched a new website and has moved their 26th Story blog over to the site.

Wiley e-Textbook pilot at the University of Texas at Austin kicks off

According to a recent article, the Wiley e-textbook pilot at the University of Texas at Austin began on January 20. The pilot includes free e-textbooks for 1300 students enrolled in six different classes, in an effort to test how useful e-textbooks are for faculty and students. Additionally, for students that prefer a physical copy of the text, the campus store will print any textbook at a cost of 1.5 cents per page. As noted in a previous posting, the university is providing the content via an institutional licensing model and therefore the content will only be free initially. If the program is successful, students could pay $25-45 a book in licensing fees.

The article also provides some commentary from Michael Granof, chairman of the University Co-op, who fears that if the program continues after the pilot and the university takes responsibility for supplying the e-textbooks, it could undermine the viability of the co-op bookstore. He explains, “There's no reason for a university to get involved with licensing. If a publisher has an e-book available, the instructor can put the link to the book on the course Web site and the student can click the link and buy the book from the Co-op, just as they would for any other book they bought.”

For institutions that decide to digitally license content and provide e-textbooks via this method, the impact to campus stores and institutions could be significant. Since profit earned by many stores goes back into the institution to support things like financial aid or student services, licensing models could have a double financial impact for institutions (and students) – creating new costs on one side, while reducing the revenue available to cover those costs and others on the flip side. If the rising cost of content licensing in the library is any indicator, licensing solutions for institutions on the textbook side are likely to only yield a short-term cost savings for students.

Higher Education, Technology, E-books, and Hype

One of the most widely read technology publications in higher education, the EDUCAUSE Review, announced the 10 most read articles of 2008 recently. The collection show an interesting focus on the future of technology in education. The #1 ranked piece, Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler is a definite read.

Of course, a little self-horn-tooting is also on call for E-Books in Higher Education: Nearing the End of the Era of Hype? which came it at #5 on the list. That article was actually written over a year ago -- and how much things have changed in a year's time. The evidence seems to suggest that we are getting closer to the end of that era of hype, but the "tipping point" is still elusive. Open access course materials are on the rise -- as is the inexorable increase in the cost of traditional printed course materials. We are anticipating several new innovations to hit the market this year, and expect collegiate retailers and academic institutions to take another step (or two) forward in making digital options available for students.

It would be interesting to see some analysis on where the e-book industry currently lies along the Gartner Hype Cycle. In one report from late December, entitled "Emerging Trend: The E-Book's Day Is Finally Ready to Dawn" the executive summary notes that E-book readers and other digital replacements for paper publications have been in experimental development for 15 years. However, given key differences in the latest e-book generation, we expect it will, at last, gradually enter the mainstream.

At the same time, a couple weeks ago Gartner issued another report, Contrasting Findings on the Digital Native, which suggests that the digital native concept deserves critical scrutiny. A far more skeptical approach to assumptions about digital natives is recommended before reorganizing service delivery to accommodate this cohort of next-generation consumers. This conclusion is not new, but it is reassuring to hear someone else say it as well. The data from the ECAR annual student study, now in its fifth year of longitudinal data collection, continues to convince me that while student patterns are changing, most students may be more adept in using technology for communication and collaboration than they are in using technology for productivity or learning. It may be that the current set of college students are digital immigrants like the rest of us.

University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine selects VitalSource to deliver digital curriculum

Recently, Ingram Digital announced an agreement with the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine to offer a complete medical program curriculum via the VitalSource e-book platform. According to the press release, beginning with the incoming class of 2012, students will receive a university issued laptop that contains 30 pre-loaded e-textbooks for use during their first two years of classes. During the third and fourth years, students will purchase the e-textbooks from the University’s online store. Unlike other e-textbook rentals where the material can only be accessed for one semester, students will also be able to access their materials as long as they retain student status and can transfer their license if they upgrade their computer. The University’s decision to offer a completely digital curriculum provides yet another example that e-textbooks are gaining ground. Medical and dental schools, which have fairly standardized curriculums within a school, have been more likely to move more completely to digital collections than other disciplines or academic areas.

Pearson CEO speaks at SIIA

There was an interesting blog post on Personanondata last week capturing her notes from Marjorie Scardino's (the CEO of Pearson) talk at the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) meeting.

What I found interesting in the notes is Pearson's view, as one of the largest educational publishers, on their role in developing the skills needed for the 21st century. The blog notes that,

In her opinion, (and this follows how Pearson is expanding) companies have to take a long term view: change the way teachers teach, the way readers interact with news, information and content. Additionally, the long term view or approach to investment has to be consistent. She says, sustained investment is difficult in a public company. The key to success is to involve your customers. Release your software early and enable a culture that allows ‘do-overs’ assuming they are corrected or improved rapidly.

The posting notes some other comments that are relevant to college stores and those interested in the future of course materials as well. Ideas like the "need to try everything," "generating new ideas from all levels as a cultural shift," and the "inextricable binding of content and technology" are just a couple examples. One interesting remark in the notes is the comment that Pearson:

... as a company long ago realized that content was becoming a commodity in news and other segments like education. “There is only a few ways to describe photosynthesis” or describe history. Technology however can be a differentiator if used in an appropriate manner so the company attempts to understand how the reader interacts with the content. This approach is used in news, where there is more attention paid to analysis than news reporting, and also in education.

An interesting perspective. for a publishing company -- particularly given the radical transformation hitting the newspaper publishing industry these days. Perhaps there are additional lessons for college stores and textbook publishers to learn from these sister industries. Thoughts?

Second Generation Amazon Kindle expected to be introduced next week

According to a posting on The New York Times Bits blog, the second generation Amazon Kindle could be introduced at a news conference hosted by Jeff Bezos on February 9. The Amazon Kindle webpage has also been updated and now explains that new purchases are “Expected to ship in 4 to 6 weeks.” As noted in a previous posting, when the first generation Kindle sold out before Christmas, the expected ship date was 11 to 13 weeks. Some speculate that those who purchased Kindles over the holidays or put their name on the waiting list for the first generation Kindle will actually receive the new model. If the leaked photos that appeared on the Boy Genius Report website are accurate, the new model will have a similar look but will include round buttons and smaller side buttons to correct the design flaws of the first model. The new model is also expected to use the Broadsheet microchip from Epson and E-Ink which is currently used in the Sony Reader 700. The technology provides a more responsive screen with faster screen refreshes.

“Should technology change the way we read?”

The Harper Studio blog had a thought provoking post recently asking the question, Should technology change the way we read? The posting references a site created by a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin to help students interact with Dante’s Divine Comedy. The professor’s site is designed to complement the original work and enhance the student’s reading experience. The posting also references another book created by a German author that incorporates Google Earth illustrations. It is considered a “geo novel”, with pages accompanied by a satellite view of the current location of the story. Such evolutions of technology and reading raise some interesting questions on what the future of reading (and course materials) might be in the future as e-book technologies evolve.