E-TEXTBOOKS: their place in the undergraduate content mix

Students and e-textbooks - the vision and the reality

• Three years ago students were said to be a prime target for e-books: they had been brought up with the technology and would take to using e-textbooks, as they were called, like ducks to water.

• However, in 2003, technology, expertise, software, and functionality in this area all remain uncertain, imperfect, and mutually entangling.

The current state of the general e-book market

• Publishers are certainly creating e-books, but they not making a major fuss about them.

• Online bookstores are still stocking e-books, although in early September Barnes & Noble announced they were stopping e-book sales from their sites.

• The OEBF also reported its first set of aggregated e-book sales statistics, showing strong growth in e-book sales, up 30% in the first half of 2003.

Defining e-textbooks - their place within electronic content for undergraduates

• It is hard to distinguish an ?e-textbook? from the more general ?e-book?, which includes fiction, reference, scholarly monographs, as well as medical handbooks and technical guides.

• Although some e-books are enhanced digitally to provide additional materials, most are simply electronic replicas of the print version.

• Many publishers have created companion websites for their textbook programmes, storing a wide range of interactive materials related to the textbook, rather than the exact text of the book itself.

What?s available in the market?

• This section takes a look at the e-textbook publishing programmes of Taylor & Francis, McGraw-Hill, Cavendish Publishing, Oxford University Press and the Open University. There is also a look at an example e-textbook from John Wiley.

Using e-textbooks

Hardware issues:

• None of the various book reading devices found significant markets in the UK or Europe and as of August 2003 most of the initial entrants were no longer on sale, including the goReader, and Gemstar readers.

• One or two ?3rd generation? reading devices survive in the North American market, and manufacturers are working on new technologies.

• Given the instabilities in the dot.com markets at the turn of the century, it was hard for the form and technology of these devices to mature.

Software issues:

• Most academic publishers make their e-books available in at least two of the available formats, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, Palm and Mobipocket. In addition, some aggregators aiming at the student market have their own software readers that users must download.

Selling e-textbooks

• There are multiple approaches to the sale and distribution of e-books:
  • sold on an outright purchase model, often at the same or a lower price than the printed equivalent;

  • portable subscriptions;

  • micropayments;

  • access to the product for specific lengths of time;

  • allowing users to compile their own e-books.
• E-books are often held in a separate catalogue and whilst some online catalogues enable reciprocal links between e-book and print records, many do not.

What?s holding the market back?

• Digital rights management and copy protection software restrict free use of the content and can make for an awkward user experience

• It is not always easy to persuade students of the benefits of e-textbooks, particularly given the background of a flourishing second hand textbook market.

• Despite the efforts of the Open eBook Foundation there have been major problems over standards in this arena.

• Customization technology for users to create e-textbooks is beginning to emerge but has not developed as fast as was expected.

• Given the background of the Open Archives Initiative and the Open Access journals movement, universities and academics may believe that they are capable of managing