{"id":272877,"date":"2010-02-03T18:00:39","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T23:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theappleblog.com\/?p=40427"},"modified":"2010-02-03T18:00:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T23:00:39","slug":"textbook-publishers-prepare-for-ipad-murdoch-favors-high-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/272877","title":{"rendered":"Textbook Publishers Prepare for iPad, Murdoch Favors High Prices"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Wall Street Journal has reported<\/a> that major textbook publishers have made deals with ScrollMotion Inc, in an effort to bring their textbooks to digital devices — including Apple\u2019s upcoming iPad.<\/p>\n

McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and Kaplan Inc are all named as ScrollMotions\u2019s latest partners (customers?). According to WSJ, ScrollMotion;<\/p>\n

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\u2026has already developed applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. ScrollMotion takes digital files provided by publishers for the iPad, adapts them to fit on the device, and then adds enhancements such as a search function, dictionaries, glossaries, interactive quizzes and page numbers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pretty much all the things you\u2019d expect from a a digital edu-book. Other cool features said to be included in the iPad deal include;<\/p>\n

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\u2026applications to let students play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes to test how much they’ve learned and where they may need more work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Only in recent years have tablet devices begun to offer a glimpse at a practical digital realization of many educators long-harbored dreams. It helps enormously<\/em> that they\u2019re book-shaped (almost removing the physical and psychological barriers laptops and desktop computers put between people), and, sometimes, they\u2019re almost<\/em> affordable. Sadly, their adoption has been hampered by lackluster design. Until the iPad appeared, the Kindle offered the best digital textbook platform for students and teachers, although that\u2019s not saying much; the Kindle is slow, features a greyscale-only screen and offers a cumbersome input method. Most importantly, the Kindle does only one<\/em> thing. It does it competently<\/em>, to be sure, but it doesn\u2019t dazzle<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder then, that textbook publishers are paying close attention to the iPad; it not only improves on the Kindle in almost every way (perhaps with the exception of battery life) but introduces an input paradigm already very well established and understood by millions of iPhone or iPod Touch owners. Some critics decry a lack of multitasking<\/a> and expansion; but consider the far more powerful reality that the iPad just happens to be the easiest-to-use computer ever made<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For a teaching\/learning aid, on the trajectory of “intuitively easy” it lies closer to the humble pen and paper than to a TFT screen with a bunch of plastic keys and a pointing device.<\/p>\n

Publishers were already dipping their toes into the digital book market, but only tentatively. Now the iPad is just around the corner, it looks like they\u2019re losing those prior inhibitions and preparing to dive right in, though they’re trying not to sound too<\/em> enamoured. Rik Kranenburg, president of McGraw-Hill’s higher education unit, said;<\/p>\n

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People have been talking about the impact of technology on education for 25 years. It feels like it is really going to happen in 2010. Nobody knows what device will take off, or which ‘killer app’ will drive student adaptations. Today they aren’t reading e-textbooks on their laptops. But ahead we see all kinds of new instruction materials.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Prickly Issue<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Of course, the issue of Price remains prickly. Amazon sold its e-books at $9.99, despite the wishes of publishers who wanted to charge a bit more.\u00a0Now, following a bit of a public spat<\/a> with publisher Macmillans, prices of some e-book titles on Amazon.com (and, presumably, international Amazon sites) are beginning to change. Amazon maintains they set book prices at $9.99 to make it fair for consumers. Cynicism, on the other hand, offers an alternative reason, that includes the phrases “loss leader” and “market dominance.” I’ll leave you to decide which is most likely.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, one man who never seems to give two hoots about what\u2019s fair, right or even logical \u2013 Rupert \u201cMad Dog\u201d Murdoch \u2013 took a break from hating on Google to declare that he supported (and preferred) Apple\u2019s pricing model for titles in the iBookstore. In a News Corp. earnings call yesterday, Murdoch said<\/a>,<\/p>\n

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We don\u2019t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99\u2026 We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books. We are not against [electronic] books. On the contrary we like them very much indeed. It is low cost to us\u2026 Apple in its agreement with us [\u2026] does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s interesting to note that a lot of criticism and debate surrounding Apple\u2019s foray into e-book sales has been negative. Many bloggers have grumbled bitterly about Apple \u201cdoing to the publishing industry what they did to the music industry\u201d and even yesterday All Things Digital<\/em> was making reference<\/a> to the “scarring” experienced by the music industry.<\/p>\n

But what exactly did Apple do<\/em> to the music industry that was so terrible? Last time I checked, Apple pretty much saved<\/em> it, bringing sanity to a media landscape that, before the iTunes store arrived, was a fragmented sales and accessibility nightmare, where prices and content distribution were so appallingly<\/em> inconsistent across competing services\/platforms that scores of customers resorted to illegal file sharing as the de facto<\/em> method for getting music.<\/p>\n

If Apple can bring to the publishing industry the same format homogeny, pricing stability and content distribution\/management methods that it brought to the music industry, that\u2019s good for everyone. Everyone except Amazon.<\/p>\n

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The Wall Street Journal has reported that major textbook publishers have made deals with ScrollMotion Inc, in an effort to bring their textbooks to digital devices — including Apple\u2019s upcoming iPad. McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and Kaplan Inc are all named as ScrollMotions\u2019s latest partners (customers?). According to WSJ, ScrollMotion; \u2026has already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}