Textbook Authorship

New Business Models in Textbook Publishing

Digitization, the online delivery of instructional materials, the used book business, the rise of self-publishing, and the open access movement collectively are fundamentally changing the world of higher education textbook publishing. Many are asking, how can the college textbook business remain profitable for both authors and publishers? Authors stand to lose out on advances and royalties, not to mention losing intellectual property. And to survive, publishers must find ways to provide low-cost instructional materials while competing with free online sources and the used textbook market.

Depending on their mission and commitment to a traditional publishing model, publishers' responses have included divesting themselves of their higher education divisions, becoming online rather than print publishers, licensing textbooks to institutions as part of course management software, and slicing and dicing their backlists to provide free or low-cost course content. Solutions also have included a "pay-per-view" approach, selling textbooks by the chapter, and a consortium approach, in which a group of publishers shares a website for retail sales where customers can buy textbooks or mix and match textbook content from a variety of publishing houses.

Publishers' dollars that once went into textbook development and design are now going into web site development, content delivery software, and online marketing. Job boards in the publishing industry now call for workers filling new job categories like the following (from Publishers Lunch, publishersmarketplace.com): online editor, digital workflow associate, digital manager, digital analyst, electronic media editor, online marketing manager, digital publisher, digital community builder, web producer, and digital business developer. Many big houses now offer advances only for projects with the greatest projections of sales revenue, and royalty schedules are kept at the lowest until a book breaches high sales benchmarks. Publishers also increasingly require that authors pay back advances that don't earn out, and books that merely break even are not revised (i.e., get the axe).

What can authors do to continue to derive income from textbooks they have written? They can try to keep their textbook alive in online revisions and adapt or provide content for companion web sites or other digital supplements. They can try to negotiate electronic rights separately from print (and good luck to them). If they get back the right to their existing textbook, they can parse and repurpose text to sell as instructional content. They can self-publish the work as an e-textbook and sell it online. And they can use their existing work as the basis for constructing a new interactive online course that institutions or students pay for. These latter solutions essentially put authors in competition with publishers. How's that for a paradigm shift!

Finally, authors can give away their textbooks or supplements or other content for free online and make money on collateral goods. Some online textbook sites, for example, offer royalties for downloads or print copies ordered or for homework site subscriptions. Some repositories offer to pay for the exclusive or nonexclusive use of content. Some authors offer some content for free on their web sites and deliver other content by paid subscription, or offer fee-based teleseminars, webcasts, or consultations. Thus, though it seems counterintuitive, the irresistible open access movement toward free textbooks is actually suggesting new ways to make money.

In my next posts I will explore those new ways and how authors can repurpose existing text and construct original digital textbooks.

Labels: business models, digitization, e-textbooks, Mary Ellen Lepionka, online textbooks, open access textbooks, textbook publishing

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 11:25 AM 0 Comments

Open Access Publishing

Well, here I am, back again after a long hiatus (a long winter's nap?). Now, with lengthening days at last, I'll pick up where promised, on the topic of open access publishing. The open access movement, which began in the mid-1960s, has gathered momentum, not only in academic circles, with Harvard University recently joining MIT in offering free online access to scholarship and courses, but even to commercial publishing. With the rapid growth and acceptance of open access textbooks, for example, traditional publishers have moved either to provide hybrid online custom publishing (such as McGraw-Hill Higher Education's deal with MERLOT) or to divest themselves of their soon to be unprofitable textbook divisions altogether (such as Thomson Learning).

Surviving higher education publishers likely will remain profitable only by reducing costs through digitization and electronic delivery and by taking advantage of the tremendous growth in online advertising. (Perhaps the second edition of my book, Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, just out, will become obsolete! I think I'll start a revision of my other book, Writing and Developing College Textbook Supplements, which has chapters on creating e-texts, or maybe I'll start a new book on creating instructional content for the digital age!)

The following paragraphs come from Chapter 1 of my second edition book:

"For participants in the open access movement, however, profitability simply is not an issue. Typically, the participants are scholars, scientists, researchers, and educators with funding from grants, endowed chairs, philanthropic organizations, institutional salaries, and the like. Publishing or self-archiving in an open access journal or repository is already paid for--that is, paying the bills does not depend on publishing revenues but on attracting funding from other sources."

"Research has hinted that the chief attraction of open access for academics (aside from the philosophical) is 1) the easy searchability of content through keywords and metatags, 2) the far greater number of “hits” one gets than from readership through library patronage or paid journal subscriptions, and 3) the resulting increase in citations, which boosts visibility, credibility, and standing in the grant-getting world as well as with one’s academic department, tenure committee, or institution. Scholarship criteria for promotion and tenure will have to change to reflect the new publishing model of open access."

"Other new publishing models include blogs—chronological personal writings, including researchers’ field notes; wikis—collaborative web sites that anyone can edit; and crowdsourcing—online publishing of content to which readers are invited to contribute. For better or worse, some social science researchers already are using crowdsourcing as a way to collect qualitative data. For a perspective on the Open Education Resource movement in higher education, explore the database and pages at oedb.org/, especially oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools."

Social bookmarking--saving bookmarks to a public web site and tagging them with keywords to share--is another new model that extends to academic publishing (see, for example, de.lirio.us and citeulike). That revered catchphrase in education--"Let us establish learning communities"--is finally taking on real meaning! Meanwhile, is anyone else besides me starting to feel panicky about keeping up with all these changes?

Labels: custom publishing, digitization, open access publishing, open access textbooks, open education

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 12:44 PM 0 Comments