[Ecommerce] e-textbooks story in NYT

[Manon Ress]

By RANDALL STROSS
Published: August 27, 2006
WHO will stand up to eulogize the fat tome of learning, the college
textbook?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/business/yourmoney/27digi.html?
ei=3D5058&en=3Dc65f36ee674accde&ex=3D1157256000&partner=3DIWON&pagewanted=
=3Dall

Writers have written lovingly of the tactile pleasures provided by
printed books and newspapers, but no one has paid particular tribute
to the voluptuous four-color, four-pound textbook. Now being replaced
by weightless electronic versions, the bound artifact remains forlorn
and unloved. In any ceremony marking its demise, college students may
want to throw a fusillade of stones at its coffin. Expensive texts,
after all, have broken many student budgets.

A $4 billion-a-year business cannot change fundamentally overnight;
the shift from printed to electronic textbook will take years. In the
meantime, a small publisher of college textbooks, Freeload Press of
St. Paul, seeks to take advantage of this flux with a new concept:
providing free e-textbooks to students. The catch? Ads are inserted
within the text.

It has been 16 years since Channel One=92s advertising-supported news
broadcasts first slipped into the commercial-free space of middle
schools and high schools; today, its in-class advertising, it says,
reaches seven million students.

Channel One was able to parachute in televisions and satellite
systems like relief supplies to school systems short of cash. Having
secured the acquiescence of central administrators, the company never
had to fight its way into each classroom, stepping over teachers who
objected to the intrusion of commercials into their realm.

Higher education has not been so easy to crack. For the most part,
instructors are free to choose whichever textbook they think best
suits the needs of their classes, an arrangement that periodically
upsets advisory commissions that would like to transplant the one-
size-fits-all approach of secondary education to colleges.

Universities will accept gifts from prominent business executives =97
Stanford students, for example, stand a good chance of guessing who
provided the lead gift for the Gates Computer Science Building =97 and
corporate benefactors can expect credit on a plaque for donations of
money and equipment. But the core of the university, its intellectual
autonomy, is protected by a faculty unbeholden to outside interests.

Textbooks used in the classroom are, like the instructors themselves,
extensions of a university=92s autonomy and no more likely to be
considered an appropriate place for corporate ads than the classroom
lectern (or the instructor=92s forehead).

Freeload Press seems unlikely to be the company that will succeed in
adding commercial messages to the typical college textbook. Its
problems begin with that unfortunate name, which conjures an image of
party crashers cadging free beer, not a publishing concern striving
for the highest intellectual standards. It was founded two years ago
and has found the going slow.

Excluding study aids, it offers 15 textbook titles, most of them in
math and business, and relies on an even smaller base of authors who
contribute to multiple books. This summer, the company announced that
the University of Michigan was the 100th college to assign one of its
textbooks, but this number exaggerates the popularity because it
includes those that have tried it once and have not opted for a
second trial.

The number of universities that will be using any of its free
textbooks as a required text this fall is only 38.

Without a full range of outstanding textbooks, Freeload will remain
nothing more than a concept with dubious prospects. It can=92t sign up
the authors it needs to expand its offerings because professors balk
at the juxtaposition of =93Solution to Demonstration Problem=94 on one
page and an ad for a double bacon cheeseburger and fries on the next.
The example is not hypothetical.

Randal E. Bryant, dean of Carnegie Mellon=92s School of Computer
Science, did not have any kind words about the quality of the
Freeload titles that he reviewed. His summary: =93They=92re closer to
Schaum=92s notes than to university-level course textbooks.=94 He
predicted that Freeload would continue to find it hard to recruit top
authors because of the mingling of advertising and supposedly
disinterested teaching.

=93The idea will be too much of a cultural leap for some,=94 the company
says on its Web site about resistant faculty members. It matter-of-
factly aims at professors willing to choose a textbook based on =93the
price/value consideration alone.=94

Asked to select a textbook on the basis of price over quality,
professors will resist, as they properly should. Professors, however,
are not blind to the shocking prices of new textbooks. Nor are they
deaf to the complaining voices of their students. They know that
students increasingly buy used textbooks, and that this in turn
affects the prices on new texts that sit unsold on the shelves.

J. Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the
Association of American Publishers, said publishers report that sales
of a new textbook edition evaporate almost completely after one year,
when used copies flood the market.

Authors say that this drives publishers to shorten the intervals
between revisions and to raise prices to try to recoup development
costs from a shrinking base of new-book buyers =97 then the cycle repeats.

The system is broken. Its replacement, however, should not entail a
hasty embrace of advertising and substandard contents, but rather
adoption of electronic versions of the best textbooks in their field,
at much-reduced prices and free of advertising.

When I spoke last week with Jefferson P. Williams, a lecturer of
accounting at the University of Michigan, whose summer school course
placed his university at the top of Freeload=92s celebratory news
release, he did not assert that the Freeload textbook was equal in
quality to better-known texts.

He had selected the financial accounting textbook for a class of 20
non-accounting majors mainly on the basis of price and adequate
coverage. It is noteworthy that he found that many students ended up
paying after all. Most class members found reading the dense pages on
the computer monitor to be a strain and resorted to buying a
softbound printed version of the book =97 free of ads =97 from Freeload
Press for $35.

The reading difficulty is created by Freeload=92s use of PDF images,
which retain the printed page=92s layout without reformatting.
Navigating around a single superwide, supertall page requires lots of
clicking and zooming and patience. The company will soon use improved
software that can automatically adjust the text so it is more
legible, said Tom Duran, a founder of Freeload Press and its chief
executive.

Also planned are what Mr. Duran calls a =93payload version=94 of the
print edition, one with ads embedded in the text. His company likens
its textbook advertising to that accepted by newspapers and magazines.

But this defense ignores the main reason that the advertising in
textbooks is objectionable. It=92s not the fear of direct tampering
with content but the idea that select interests shouldn=92t be able to
rent the attention of a captive student audience.

When soliciting advertisers, Freeload unapologetically calls
attention to its own readership=92s lack of choice: =93Your Marketing
Message works overtime in textbooks=94 because =93grades provide
motivated readers; quizzes, tests and finals drive traffic back and
forth throughout the medium.=94

Most faculty members do not wish to have their teaching associated
with specific sponsors. Mr. Hildebrand, of the Association of
American Publishers, said, =93Faculty want their instruction material
to be neutral.=94 Last year, a Canadian subsidiary of McGraw-Hill began
to solicit advertisements for a printed textbook, but an uproar of
objections caught the attention of the home office, which promptly
shut down the initiative.

A spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill, Mary Skafidas, reiterated last week
that the company did not place ads in its textbooks. =93We never have,
and we never will,=94 she said.

THE major publishers are introducing e-textbooks at reduced prices.
McGraw-Hill offers 2,000 of its textbook titles in electronic format
in addition to print; Pearson has 800 electronic titles. Less
expensive to produce for obvious reasons, both publishers=92 e-
textbooks are priced at half as much as the printed versions. The
software used by these publishers automatically resizes the e-book=92s
pages, reducing the pain of reading on-screen.

These e-textbooks are not books in the customary sense. Sandi
Kirshner, chief marketing officer for Pearson=92s higher-education
group, says the e-textbook is offered only on a =93subscription basis,=94
which means that a student buys access for a defined period, like a
semester, and cannot resell access to the book to others.

A real-world Solution to Demonstration Problem: hold the double bacon
cheeseburger and fries.


Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor
of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: ddomain@nytimes.com.


************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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