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Textbook Publishers:
Who's Afraid of eBooks?
As dot.com fever dies down,
Fortune magazine asks: have the traditional educational publishers
re-gained control in the book industry, with content still being
king? Seemingly faced with extinction just a few years
back, these old-line publishers developed their own web and
e-text strategies (see box below), which included teaming up
with the upstarts. Now, will they re-think the "e-ification"
of their business? These fast-changing events in the previously
slow-paced textbook publishing industry are chronicled in the
February 5, 2001 issue of Fortune magazine.
Following last year's dot.com
consolidations, and with it their plans to develop their own
content down the drain, the hype and pressure from the upstarts
receded. The textbook publishers were in control again.
They had the content, and the dot-coms needed to team
up with them. "Everyone's got partnerships with everyone
these days, and the winner will be the one with the best content,"
says McGraw-Hill's Henry Hirschberg.
Now, who's afraid of eBooks?
Not, Susan Driscoll, COO of textbook publisher Bedford
Freeman & Worth, who argues that eBooks will be too expensive
to design and build-especially multimedia ones. And, Bob
Christie, CEO of Thomson Learning, wonders how his firm will
fare marketing directly to students. Traditionally, textbook
sales were pitched to professors, but now with thousands of
students visiting their websites, educational publishers hope
to sell study aids, outside reading, and other content directly
to college kids.
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The Book on Textbooks
and eBooks
"When it comes
to Webifying the book world, the group to watch
is the $3.3 billion college textbook industry,"
claims Fortune in the February 5, 2001 feature on
eBooks and the textbook makers. Meanwhile,
Forrester Research predicts that eBooks will flop,
but Print-On-Demand and digital textbooks will thrive,
according to its yearend forecast for publishers
(click
here...).
The top textbook
and reference publishers include such icons as Houghton
Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Thomson
Learning, and John Wiley & Sons. who Fortune
says "have tackled the college market with
the fervor of frat boys at rush".
Their ePublishing
initiatives, once limited to CD-ROM add-ons, now
include:
- selling books
chapter by chapter
- offering student
aids online
- experimenting
anew with multimedia
- selling directly
to students materials, previously available
only through instructors
- planning to
make texts for eBooks
Despite all the
current fuss about eBook offerings by Stephen King
and other best-selling authors, educational publishers
may lead the way in the future. According
to Jupiter Research, by 2005, eBooks will make up
about 6.5% of college textbooks sales vs. less than
2% of consumer-book sales. "The opportunity
for textbooks and professional books will, over
time, be substantial," says Jupiter analyst
Robert Hertzberg. Forrester Research agrees.
It predicts digital delivery of print-on-demand
books, textbooks, and eBooks will total $7.8 billion,
or about 17.5% of publishing industry revenues,
in five years. But, only $251 million will
derive from eBooks for eBook devices.
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