[nabs-l] Electronic College Textbooks

[T. Joseph Carter]

The promise is that the future belongs to DAISY.  And you know, it 
might just, if only because the emerging standard for ebooks is the 
epub format, and epub as a standard is fairly close to DAISY.  The 
probability is that with the appropriate access key, a literary work 
in epub format would likely work flawlessly in our favorite DAISY 
text reader of choice, with current firmware.

In order to pave the way for widespread DAISY availability for 
collegiate texts, it is then necessary to encourage the adoption of 
epub versions of these texts.  To do this, it is necessary to remove 
present roadblocks to adoption of the format.  Once that is done, it 
will be easy to make each of the three major stakeholders realize 
that electronic texts are in their best interest.  Finally, providers 
of reading technology and content producers will need to produce an 
offering that suits the need of a student.

The Roadblocks

Currently, there are a few things that stand in the way of widespread 
adoption of electronic textbooks, mostly due to publisher practices.  

The first is existing DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions.  
Students routinely photocopy or otherwise reproduce content of their 
textbooks for use in class assignments.  If existing DRM permissions 
even allow these uses, they are typically heavily restricted to the 
degree that they may as well not be present at all.

While DRM does not stop those determined to defeat it for legitimate 
or other uses, this can be mitigated using "fair" DRM policies that 
still discourage abuse.  For works of a scholarly nature, this means 
printing and copying must be permitted.  They can be restricted to 
perhaps 10 pages or 2000 words at a time without significantly 
impeding legitimate uses, but these should not be restricted in terms 
of time or life of the book.  Of course, restricting the use of 
screen access technologies should never be done.

The next issue is price.  An unfortunate trend is for an ebook 
intended for college students to be priced at 50-75% of the printed 
book with an expiration of three months.  This doesn't pass the smell 
test for college students who, as a rule, tend to be pretty bright.  
They know that it is expensive to print, warehouse, and ship books.  
Students also know that electronic delivery costs so little by 
comparison that it hardly warrants consideration.

Of course, the publishers will charge the price the market will bear, 
and publishers already add additional "free" content to books to 
justify prices that are seen as too high by most students.  Based on 
the textbook prices as of this Fall 2009 term, it seems that textbook 
producers should well consider approximately 50% of the shelf price 
for five months' access to the content.  I'd suggest a full year-long 
license at 60% and 75% for no expiry.  This also poses potential for 
about a 5% surcharge on the difference for upgrading your book 
license and the possibility of selling the latest edition at a 
discount to customers of older editions of a book.  The market 
potential seems significant.

The third barrier is that existing access technologies aren't up to 
par.  The Amazon devices feature a crude annotation system, but even 
if a system today were to support bookmarks, highlighting, 
annotations, and more, we don't have a way to share this content 
between devices.  In fact often we cannot even use the books on more 
than a single device, to say nothing of the content.  It's probable 
that a book will find its way onto at least two or three computers, a 
dedicated book reader, and a mobile phone.  Synchronizing bookmarks 
and other end-user markup is a solvable problem, but the industry has 
not yet figured out that the problem exists.

The Stakeholders

Thus far, I have not really addressed the blind student at all.  The 
reason for this is that the needs of the blind student are the same 
as the sighted student, for the most part.  We in the blindness 
community are a little further along in solving some of the 
roadblocks mentioned above, but ultimately they exist for us as well 
as the sighted world.

The problem will be solved because it is in the best interest of all 
of the stakeholders--universities, students, and publishers--to see 
it done.  Market forces will demand a solution.  That is, unless of 
course universities and publishers seek government intervention to 
artificially subsidize the status quo.  That, however, is another 
discussion.

Consider each stakeholder's reason for moving to digital content:

The university.  The cost of higher education is increasing year 
after year.  Frankly, it's reached a breaking point for many 
students.  They simply cannot afford the cost of higher education, 
and universities know it.  While this too could begin an entire 
discussion of its own, a reduction in cost will be necessary.  The 
university is determined to see that the reductions impact it as 
little as possible, which encourages the universities to join 
students in pressuring publishers for lower textbook costs.  This is 
already happening.

The publisher.  A digital textbook does not replace a printed book 
for many people, so publishers have little to fear that their core 
business model will fail any time soon.  To them, digital content 
may be viewed as analogous to the pulp paperback.  It isn't, though.  
You don't often see textbooks in that format, even though the average 
undergraduate views their textbook in much that way.  Still, digital 
books put an end to used book sales, which is reason enough to do it.  
That it also gives professors more flexibility and better serves the 
needs of the student customer is a convenient benefit as well.

The student.  As already mentioned, the student needs the reduced 
costs, but there are other benefits as well.  If the roadblocks above 
are resolved, they will have powerful study tools available.  Working 
digitally saves time, as well.  You can copy a quote directly to your 
clipboard (or a citation for the same selection in your preferred 
citation format), digitally search the text, follow hyperlinks, and 
more, instantly.  It also saves resources and the students' backs.

Each group of stakeholders has much to gain from a transition to 
digital books, so it will happen at some point.  The sooner it 
happens, the better for all.

Reading Technology

There is one more stakeholder to consider in a transition to 
electronic textbooks.  These books need to be read somehow using 
either software or hardware book readers.  Presently, these vary 
widely.  Content often is not interchangeable, and user-created 
content never is.  Books are copied from host computers to any other 
device desired or accessed directly on the target device.

Reader software is available, but somewhat primitive (except the 
software used by the blind, I'll note, which is usually quite 
exceptional because we use it so extensively.)  Hardware readers are 
less primitive, but have been expensive.  Fortunately, on all counts 
the market is beginning to catch up.

There is just one problem:  Standards.  The industry needs to settle 
on a format and migrate to it.  It needs to develop standards for 
user-created content and standardize the access protocols for online 
book distribution.  If I coin the term "bookdav protocol", perhaps 
the more technical reader will understand my meaning.  For the rest 
of us, it's enough to say that my book reader of choice needs to work 
with any publisher or distributor.

These standards should extend to user-defined content such for books.  
Annotations, highlights, bookmarks, etc.  Not every reader device 
will be able to create these, but most should support viewing.  And 
since we're already discussing content being device agnostic, the 
transmission such data should be bi-directional for any device able 
to create or alter such content.

Summary

The transition away from the printed book to the electronic will 
assist the blind student.  It will happen in time, but it will not be 
easy.  The technology is almost where it needs to be, but still must 
catch up a bit.  Perhaps the most important area where this is still   
needed is in standardization and distribution of content, since these 
factors affect publishers' ability to move boldly in the direction of 
market forces.  That said, the technical hurdles can and will be 
solved within the next couple of years.  The real question is whether 
publishers will adopt practices that encourage consumers to pay for a 
digital download rather than a printed book.

-- 
How many children in America are not taught how to read?
If they are blind, the answer is 90%--more than 52,000 children!
Find out how you can help: http://www.braille.org/


On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 09:05:33PM -0800, Valerie Perry wrote:
>Hi  I am trying to understand the trend/future of college textbooks for
>Braille readers who use braillenotes and zoomtext. What do most people
>request from the college's alternative media department for textbooks other
>than math and science . Pdf files, Microsoft word files, Braille, audio.?
>How does the college handle math books and science books?
>
>
>
>Thanks
>
>Valerie