Textbooks: A Value Proposition

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Textbooks: A Value Proposition

11/13/2007

By Stephen R. Acker

However, although faculty value up-to-date, multi-format content, many feel the price is too high. One in three (36 percent) says the price of textbooks is reasonable when students actually use the assigned textbook and supplements to learn the course material, but 28 percent say the cost of textbooks is too high and give the reason that most students do not use the textbook and supplemental materials. Another 27 percent of the faculty respondents said the cost of textbooks was just too high, period. Here again, the conclusion has face validity, faculty are most concerned about the value of the materials in supporting student learning, but also feel that the price of textbook bundles is too high. How do we solve the paradox of providing up-to-date, multi-format, improved learning at lower cost?

Digital Distribution

Digital distribution could be the answer, but here is yet another proposition to debate:

The market abhors digital texts. It is easy enough to find examples of failed eBook experiments, but it also is easy to trace the reasons for their failure. Typically, user dissatisfaction revolves around the technology (fatiguing screens, single purpose display device, material slow to load), organization (linear “page turners,” poorly indexed content), inconvenience (I hate being tethered to an on-line text, can’t read my book under the buckeye tree), and lack of flexibility (can’t take notes, can’t seamlessly jump to new content, search and navigation are weak). Faculty who don’t really make use of the required eText (or print texts for that matter) also annoy students.

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACFSA) released their year-long study of the “broken” textbook market on June 1, 2007. After detailing a set of short term strategies similar to those above, Peter McElroy and colleagues, who prepared one of the foundational documents, launched into an impressive analysis of disaggregating textbook content and course materials and delivering them digitally rather than by truck.

In his testimony before the ACSFA, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan (formerly known as Holtzbrinck Publishers, parent company of Bedford, Freeman & Worth), had this to say about custom and digital textbooks: “Custom texts are a prime example of market demand and advances in technology. A custom text enables faculty to choose exactly those materials—chapters from one or more textbooks, their own papers and lecture notes, white papers, independent data and research, for example—they wish to use in their classes. These custom texts combine publishers’ content, but also content from a variety of third-party sources.” This “print-on-demand” model suggests a strategy to move from generic texts to custom digital content, and one in which college bookstores can play an important role. On the other side of the bridge that crosses the digital divide, some of the eBooks from Bedford, Freeman, & Worth, well-advanced in their pedagogy and offered at half the price of the print text, hint to a born digital future.