Who Will Come Out Ahead from e-Book Success in College Classrooms?

Bloomberg ran a story Friday focusing on the adoption of e-books in college classrooms:

As Sony Corp.’s (SNE) e-book devices vie with the Kindle to win over readers, the real showdown may come later: when a shift to electronic textbooks at schools threatens to eclipse the current market for the products.
…
Within five years, textbooks will be the biggest market for e-book devices, dwarfing sales to casual readers, predicts Sarah Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Corning Inc. (GLW), which is developing glass screens for e-readers, expects textbooks to fuel about 80 percent of demand for those components by 2019.

“Print will expire faster in the textbook world than in the trade book world,” Epps said. “The technical barriers will disappear and five years is enough for the content to catch up with demand. The potential is there.”
…
“The Millennials are very comfortable reading things online in a way their parents and grandparents are not,” said San Jose State University Professor Joel West, referring to the generation born in recent decades. “We will be seeing electronic textbooks become commonplace in the next 10 years.”

I said a lot of other things when interviewed about this a few months back:

• Amazon‘s (AMZN) Achilles heel is the proprietary mobi format against everyone else’s e-pub, but if college students are using a book viewer for 4 years and renting books for one semester, this becomes almost a non-issue.
• Moving from selling dead tree books (with printing costs and inventory risk) to renting e-books will reduce the publishers’ costs dramatically. If publishers don’t share those savings with consumers — given the student and politician outcry about textbook prices — there will be hell to pay. I suspect, however, that most will play games with planned obsolescence in hopes of keeping their margins up.
• I doubt the e-book reader is a separate category over the long term. To me, it seems obvious that the e-reader will go the way of the pocket camera and the MP3 player as a dead-end stand-alone device.

The unfortunate thing for Amazon and its Kindle lead is that it’s much easier for other publishers to attract the relatively small list of best-selling college texts than it is to attract a full range of popular books.

On the other hand, I think the textbook market could allow Amazon an opportunity to exit the reader business — as I believe it inevitably will — and focus on its core competence of distribution (presumably at that point indifferent as to format). Under this scenario, rapid growth in the textbook market could very well force a disaggregation of the market into distributors and players.

So Sony and Apple (AAPL) (and perhaps Nokia (NOK) and Dell (DELL)) will be competing on the hardware side and Amazon/B&N competing on the distribution side. Colleges generally shy away from mandating a particular vendor for other hardware, so I think “buy an e-pub reader” is more likely to catch on with college syllabi than “buy a Kindle.”

Comments

[Zack Miller]

Good post, Joel. Do you know if any Synaptics (SYNA) touch pads are used in ebook readers?

2009 Nov 22 08:15 AM

[GSlusher]

A few obstacles remain before the Kindle & its ilk can be used for textbooks. The most expensive texts are not history, literature, language, and the like, but math, science and engineering, where texts can easily cost $120-150. Those texts depend heavily upon graphics--diagrams, drawings, photographs, charts & graphs, and equations. They make extensive use of color. The Kindle is no better for that use than, say, an etch-a-sketch. Even if they solve the color & graphics problems (which will dramatically increase the size and cost of ebooks), there will remain usage problems. Typically, a student will look at a chart/drawing/photo/di... WHILE reading the relevant section of the text. Textbook editors are usually careful to make this easy by putting the graphics on the same or facing page as the related text. Flipping a Kindle back and forth from page to page will probably be unsatisfactory. It will probably dramatically increase the time required to read technical texts.

There are many possibilities that could enhance learning--interactive charts, dynamic equations that the student can manipulate, VR-type diagrams, where you can rotate an object and zoom in and out, etc. However, the usage problems need to be solved. It might require a larger screen, roughly the size of a 15-17" laptop. In that case, one might as well use the laptop.

FWIW, I've read a lot of technical texts, both as a student at MIT (three degrees in mechanical engineering) and as an instructor in undergraduate and graduate engineering courses.

2009 Nov 22 09:11 AM

[davesmall]

GSlusher makes good point about graphics. I think an Apple 10" tablet with OLED high definition screen will be able to display those pages in overlapping windows that can be repositioned with a flick of the finger. A bright high definition color screen will blow Kindle type products out of this market entirely.

Apple's iTunes University library is already extensive and textbooks can be easily distributed through this existing venue.

I predict that every college desk will be fitted with a charging station. Students will carry a single tablet computer that holds all of their books, notes, and can reference the web. Their tablet will have a touchscreen keyboard but they'll likely carry an accessory Bluetooth keyboard in their bag.

Textbooks will go way down in price with the elimination of printing, distribution, and inventory costs. Those savings can be used to purchase a high-end tablet which would be a bargain even in the $1000 to $2000 range.

Some students will prefer to carry a laptop computer which will work just as well.

2009 Nov 22 09:39 AM

[Snitzer]

At this stage, before price, utility, formats, etc; I'm hoping that the tech heads will give us an e-reader that one can "curl up with", like with a dead tree book, but with all the advantages of an e-reader. I want something I can read in my recliner, not something I have to sit at a table/desk with. And yes, along with the text I'd like to see color, maybe even a little video, along with the ability to access Edgar, the blogs and even web sites. Whoever gives me that gets my money and my adulation.

2009 Nov 22 05:38 PM

[Roger Knights]

"I predict that every college desk will be fitted with a charging station. Students will carry a single tablet computer that holds all of their books, notes, and can reference the web. Their tablet will have a touchscreen keyboard but they'll likely carry an accessory Bluetooth keyboard in their bag."

If desks are outfitted with an electrical outlet or DC-power charger, that would remove one of the iTablet's drawbacks, namely its much higher power consumption vs. the Kindle's e-ink. I hadn't thought of that--it's an important point. If Apple is urging colleges to make this conversion, as I now suspect, that could give it a boost.

The large-format Kindle DX can't do color, but it can display a full page onscreen, including graphics. That is, it can display any PDF document without conversion. As for the problem of facing-page graphics, e-book textbook publishers could format their books so that most graphics (except full-page graphics) are on the same page as their associated text.

The Kindle is about the same size as a trade paperback, and lighter, so it can be curled up with. There's no need to read it at a desk.

2009 Nov 22 09:42 PM

[FreeRange]

Apple is going to be the clear winner in this market. Their tablet is going to blow open a whole new category just like the iPhone did in the cellular market, and no one will be able to effectively compete against their platform consisting of a brilliant, stable and easy to use OS, iTunes, laptops, large screen desktops, iPhones, iPods and iTablet. Graphics, imbedded video, interactive capabilities, superior operating environment. Apple is the winner. Period.

2009 Nov 22 10:59 PM

[rrtzmd]

...I homeschool and use converted PDFs of textbooks for most of my teaching...color is NOT an issue...it's not any different than watching a black and white TV versus a color one...the color TV gives "prettier" images but adds little to the content...ditto for an bookreader...graphics have NOT been a problem...and remember these are simply hardacks converted to PDFs converted to Kindle compatible...now consider a textbook written specifically to utilize Kindle' s advantages -- e.g. links to dictionary or encyclopedia entries, links to internet and library references, etc, etc...and the overall advantages compared to textbooks is nearly endless -- less bulk, an entire library on a single device, ability to adjust type, ability to magnify sections, the ability of professors to write their own textbooks specific to their needs, etc, etc...I think the Kindle will produce a revolution in the educational process...


On Nov 22 09:11 AM GSlusher wrote:

> A few obstacles remain before the Kindle & its ilk can be used
> for textbooks. The most expensive texts are not history, literature,
> language, and the like, but math, science and engineering, where
> texts can easily cost $120-150. Those texts depend heavily upon graphics--diagrams,
> drawings, photographs, charts & graphs, and equations. They make
> extensive use of color. The Kindle is no better for that use than,
> say, an etch-a-sketch. Even if they solve the color & graphics
> problems (which will dramatically increase the size and cost of ebooks),
> there will remain usage problems. Typically, a student will look
> at a chart/drawing/photo/di... WHILE reading the relevant section
> of the text. Textbook editors are usually careful to make this easy
> by putting the graphics on the same or facing page as the related
> text. Flipping a Kindle back and forth from page to page will probably
> be unsatisfactory. It will probably dramatically increase the time
> required to read technical texts.
>
> There are many possibilities that could enhance learning--interactive
> charts, dynamic equations that the student can manipulate, VR-type
> diagrams, where you can rotate an object and zoom in and out, etc.
> However, the usage problems need to be solved. It might require a
> larger screen, roughly the size of a 15-17" laptop. In that case,
> one might as well use the laptop.
>
> FWIW, I've read a lot of technical texts, both as a student at MIT
> (three degrees in mechanical engineering) and as an instructor in
> undergraduate and graduate engineering courses.

2009 Nov 23 11:02 AM

[rrtzmd]

...again with the infamous "itablet"...the same one that has been rumored to be on its way for over FIVE YEARS now...at that rate, current students will be sitting in retirement homes before it arrives...


On Nov 22 10:59 PM FreeRange wrote:

> Apple is going to be the clear winner in this market. Their tablet
> is going to blow open a whole new category just like the iPhone did
> in the cellular market, and no one will be able to effectively compete
> against their platform consisting of a brilliant, stable and easy
> to use OS, iTunes, laptops, large screen desktops, iPhones, iPods
> and iTablet. Graphics, imbedded video, interactive capabilities,
> superior operating environment. Apple is the winner. Period.

2009 Nov 23 11:04 AM

[Castanea]

The problem with every description I have read of an iTablet is that people imply it has an LCD screen. The advantage of e-ink is that it will not bother your eyes after staring at a backlit screen for 10 hours. Basically any company making a smartphone now could make a tablet with a backlit screen, but people who want to use the Kindle, nook, or any other e-reader are concerned with making reading on the screen like reading something in print.
As a recent college grad, I disliked having to read hundreds of pages every week on the computer. I do not want a tablet that is the equivalent of reading on a larger iPhone screen. I might as well just sit with a laptop if the screen will still strain my eyes.

2009 Nov 23 04:02 PM