Apple Intends To 'Digitally Destroy' Textbook Publishing

bonch writes "Apple is expected to announce e-book creation and social interaction tools at their January 19 media event taking place in New York, the heart of the publishing industry. Along with expanded interactivity features such as test-taking, the event is expected to showcase an ePub 3-compatible 'Garageband for e-books' to address the lack of simple digital publishing tools. Steve Jobs reportedly considered textbook publishing to be 'an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction' and was directly involved with Apple's efforts in this area until his death."

Re:Magic

[bonch]

I know you're being tongue-in-cheek, but Apple's ability to make normal people excited about technology is one of their most important assets. I'm glad they're around to get non-techies hyped up about things like "ePub" and "digital distribution."

Steve's Right

[milbournosphere]

I'm only two years out of college, and unless things have magically corrected themselves in that time, the college text book business remains completely frakked up. They've taken the 'Edition' distribution model and have used it to very much hurt the used book business, all while pushing prices higher and higher, yet adding no real value. They've literally got students (and to a smaller sense, professors) by the balls. I gladly welcome Apple's entry to the market; somebody needs to shake things up and eat the lunch of these archaic publishers. Not everyone loves them, but Apple is one of a few companies that has shown their ability to enter a market do just that.

Re:$.99 Textbooks? Doubtful but...

[Missing.Matter]

Granted iPads do other things as well, but they aren't anywhere near good enough with battery life to compete with a book.

I'd also argue they don't do nearly enough to compete with a book. When I used to use physical textbooks, I'd write all over them. Then I started using a tablet PC for all my note taking, and I would scan in my textbooks to use digitally. With the stylus I was still able to write in them, but I would also cut and paste images, charts, etc into my notes during class. One notable example I remember is when professor trying to draw a diagram from the book onto the chalkboard, I just copied the diagram over. Everyone else was going off his mangled reproduction while I had the real thing.

Now we have the iPad, which doesn't have a digitizer and doesn't allow you to cut and paste much between applications. Everyone is trying to shoehorn it fit into education, when much better (albeit poorly marketed) alternative have been there all along.

It's not all the Textbook publshers' fault

[MuChild]

I work for a major textbook publisher that makes some of (albeit the cheapest) those textbooks.I admit that the system is broken, but the impression that the publishers are gouging the students is not entirely fair. The bookstores on campus with monopolies on their local markets and used book sales through nation-wide aggregators are a large part of the problem. All that is before we even get to piracy.

Also, textbooks these days come with a wide range of additional print and on-line resources like study guides, course management and homework systems, videos, etc. that are usually bundled with the book for "free." (I'm not going to insult you and suggest these add-ons don't effect the price of the book, but their value generally far outweighs the price)

If you want someone to blame, talk to the people who run your local bookstores.

Re:hammered out distribution rights

[TaoPhoenix]

Odd that this article is specifically about "Textbooks". It should be about "books".

No one yet has really served up the Amazon Killer. But it's lurking. Without going all TinFoil Hat, it's Print On Demand.

Let's get it out in the open. Let's thrash it out. Ebooks kinda suk. They're stuck there on your device, and they're all digitally-slimy. You can't (easily!) draw notes and fold down pages and get pizza grease all over them. I'm not even going to get into Formats and DRM and Backups etc.

Sometimes you just want an Honest to Goodness Book. But we were so wowed with Amazon's selection we drank something REALLY worse than kool-aid. (Boilermaker? Skullgrinder? NecroAtomic ZombieMaker? Oh sorry, Kids, don't read that last sentence.) The crushing future is in Print On Demand.

There are a couple of legit tech hurdles - but big picture they're cake. (Glue quality, page shear, assembly speed, blah blah.) But I have in my hand, complete with generic non-SOPA-offensive blue and white covers, three paperbacks on religious theory that are at least 75% of "Professional Quality". The binding is still intact after about 2 years, the pages are the same size within X milimeters, the ink is solid, etc.

ANY book - in one hour. (I'm being generous counting for stuff like lines, staff, etc.) Screw that wait 3 days for ship junk.

But - what is this mysterious silence? The machines are "not that expensive" (topside $100,000, peanuts for a 70,000 SF retail outlet).

So mighty Slashdot, how have the Book people managed to TOTALLY elude entire chains like Borders? Was it REALLY that much fun to go bankrupt??? Was there NO-ONE among all 19,500 employees that bothered to try to get digital rights to POD? Not a single title? Not a single attempt at getting a machine in the store? Really???

Talk about an Elephant in the Room. I am annoyed because I cannot be smarter than 100 Borders Senior Managers.

Re:hammered out distribution rights

[timeOday]

I dunno about on-demand printing. My first experience with e-books was buying one for my daughter for Christmas this year, and it has been a positive experience. It's a Nook. A bit under $100, battery life is very long, screen is easily readable - better than paper in that you can have large print if you like. She needed a book for her book club, I checked it out from the local library to her ebook, without leaving home, for free. It has a touchscreen, and you can highlight and take notes (which I haven't tried - I'll admit drawing/writing on it probably sucks, but the touchscreen makes one-finger typing somewhat bearable).

Meanwhile, we got a new phonebook dropped on our porch last night and my wife and I both said in unison, "what? What are we supposed to do with this big lump? Why waste all those trees?" Granted, reference materials are an especially weak application for paper books.

But e-books just aren't that bad anymore.

Re:$.99 Textbooks? Doubtful but...

[Missing.Matter]

You can use your finger or a stylus easily to draw over things.

This is not nearly the same as a good digitizer/stylus. With my tablet PC I had near pen/pencil level of precision and detail. I own an iPad and a stylus, and it is laughably inferior.

As for cut & paste, you can screen-shoot ANY application with a simple press of power + Home. and use that image in any application. In most apps you can also cut + paste text as well, iOS has much better universal support for that than other platforms.

On my tablet, I had my textbook open on the left, and One note open on the right. I would just lasso the image with the One Note screen grab and it was right in my notes. What you're suggesting is cumbersome and takes far too much time to do in the middle of lecture.