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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 (click here...). 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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