A major conundrum for educational publishers is what to do about Open Educational Resources (OER) -- free materials, usually available in digital form, that educators can use in their classrooms in lieu of textbooks or more traditional supplemental materials. At a time when many K-12 publishers are still struggling to establish profitable digital business models,…
I spend a lot of time commuting to and from work in my car and I try to use the time wisely. I cycle through a playlist of podcasts every week but I feel like I’m missing out on other types of content. Regardless of your daily commute, I’ll bet you’d feel the same way…
This week Amazon won a contract to provide digital textbooks and other educational materials to the New York City school district. It signifies a major milestone in Amazon’s strategic push into the K-12 market. The three-year contract is worth $30 million and requires Amazon to build a custom ebook marketplace for the NYC school district,…
Last month I shared some thoughts about how indexes seems to be a thing of the past, at least when it comes to ebooks. I’ve given more consideration to the topic and would like to offer a possible vision for the future. Long ago I learned the value an exceptional indexer can bring to a…
In today’s market there are typically two methods for ebook distribution: free or paid. I’ve said before that one day we’ll see an ad-subsidized model take hold. Purists generally reject that concept, saying they won’t let advertisements interfere with their reading experience. That’s fine. They can pay full price but I’ll sometimes opt for the…
Another major trade publisher has launched a consumer-facing site, hoping to build a community of avid readers around its authors and titles. Yesterday Random House Germany announced the launch of romance-focused site Sinnliche Seiten or “Luscious Pages.” According to Publishing Perspectives, the site offers the latest romance news, book reviews, videos, and blogs. Readers can…
I’ve been a fan of unlimited e-reading services for at least a couple of years now. When Oyster Books went under I shifted to Kindle Unlimited. For short-form magazine content I use Texture, the offering formerly known as Next Issue. Prices for these services are typically in the $10-15/month range and, for the most part,…
One topic of discussion at Digital Book World earlier this month was the degree to which the “Big 4” technology companies -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google -- are setting the agenda for what happens in the publishing industry. In the K-12 sector of the industry, however, it has seemed -- until recently -- that…
Ebook windowing is a technique designed to prevent ebooks from cannibalizing print book sales. The original thinking went something like this: Release a new title in print format only, thereby preventing e-cannibalization. The result? Frustrated consumers. If you’re an ebook reader there’s nothing worse than realizing a digital edition doesn’t exist for that new book…
When was the last time you used an index in an ebook? Maybe the better question is this: Have you ever used an index in an ebook? One of the challenges here is that most ebooks don’t have indexes, the result of the misguided notion that text search is a better solution. Every so often…
