Cindy and I have been writing textbooks since 1996. Our main book “Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning” was our first effort and we have been updated it since then. When the Internet became a potentially useful opportunity for K12 classrooms we wrote “Integrating the Internet for Meaningful Learning”. This second book was integrated with our first book in the third edition. In between, we wrote a version of the original book as a scaled down Primer that was shrink-wrapped with other educational textbooks for a small increase in price.
We wrote 5 editions of our textbook with traditional publishing companies – first, Houghton-Mifflin, then RiverDeep, and finally Cengage. The college textbook market has been consolidating for years with collections being sold to other companies and companies specializing in fewer areas. College textbooks are very expensive to develop with editors, market analysis, marketing, etc. and very expensive to sell as a consequence. Our fifth edition was sold for $140. Our books were always successful, but the “technology for teachers” courses are small. Fewer competing books, but a much smaller market compared to large introductory courses (Intro, Developmental, Educational Psychology in my general area of instruction).
As we were in our fourth edition, we began to imagine a different approach better suited to the niche for our books, insights into the process of writing textbooks in an area that changed very quickly, and what was beginning to build as a backlash to the cost of textbooks. We began pushing a model that consisted of a Primer, online resources matched to the Primer, and something I described as an “interactive syllabus” to tie a course together. I called it the $29 textbook project and argued educational technology would be a great course for a company knowing the future was going to move them away from the traditional book and the traditional development model to learn from a project targeting a market already interested in technology in education. At $29, we would share any risk as the authors’ cut of $29 is very different from $140.
Our proposal was based on logic aside from just the cost. Because the field of educational technology was moving so fast, the traditional three-year revision cycle was a very real problem. Authors don’t know if another edition will be allowed until maybe the end of the second year of each cycle. The author must then revise the book in approximately 6 months so that the book can go through the revision and review process and be printed to be advertised toward the end of the 3rd year. There are multiple frustrations in such a schedule. The time from the end of the author’s work until the release of a new book is probably nine months and the major periods of adoption are the second semester of the first year and the second year of sales for a cycle. Any advances in the field during this period of time are not part of a book put into the hands of students. We had multiple experiences describing a technology product that was discontinued or renamed and sold by a different company by the time the book was released.
The wait, wait, rush model does not work for authors and in my opinion results in shallow modifications. The most creativity and deep background research tends to be involved in the preparation of the initial product. I believed authors could continue to work toward additional editions continuously, but our expertise and daily work tend to take on a far narrower focus than is ideal in writing a book for a course covering a broad area. The idea in the $29 model was to pay authors a small amount (similar to the advance for first editions) to write continuously and make this content available immediately online possibly to be integrated in the next edition. This would offer learners an improved and less dated experience and offer authors the opportunity to remain active and keep exploring.
The idea of an interactive syllabus might make the most sense if you imagine it as a web site created with a product such as Google Sites. Google Sites simplifies the development process allowing development with limited learning time. The instructor controlled syllabus created in this fashion would allow the instructor to structure the student experience taking advantage of resources the instructor could piece together and provide access to these resources through links. I tend to see this resource based on the structure of the textbook, but this would not be necessary. If an instructor did use the chapter of a textbook as the base structure, the instructor would then link to any of the online resources provided by the textbook company the instructor felt suited her class and would link to other sources as well. Picking and choosing among web resources allows flexibility and keeps the size and price of the Primer down. There is an efficiency and flexibility here not possible with a large and expensive textbook.
Anyway, this is getting pretty long but identifies the major components of the commercial model that interested me. We explored the possibility of some version of this model with Cengage during the sales of our 5th edition and for a couple of additional years beyond the normal run of this edition. We never did reach the point at which anything we discussed was actually implemented. We were interested enough in our vision (this was latecareer so I had different motives than might have been the case in a junior faculty member). We finally decided we could not get to a way to implement some version of the $29 plan and Cengage gave us back the copyright for our book (both the company and the authors share copyright for textbooks).
I began implementing a version of the proposed model based on a Kindle ebook (for the Primer). This was not my first experiment in offering a book-type online resource for the undergrad education student. When wikis kind of caught the fancy of the education community, I developed a wiki I called “Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web”. I was not using the wiki as a collaborative writing space, but I wanted the experience of developing and hosting a wiki (I operated my own server). I made use of MediaWiki the same software used for Wikipedia and used this wiki in a grad course I taught and offered it to other instructors. A more traditional web-based of this project still exists.
We have a functional model of the $29 dollar textbook, but the Primer costs $9 as a Kindle book. The web resources are available from the same server that provides this blog. The Google sites interactive syllabus exists when I teach a course for which the book is appropriate. I have always known that selling a book without the door to door salespeople and the free examination copies textbook companies provide is tough to compete with. College instructors don’t go looking for resources. They wait for someone to come to them or explore the book vendors when attempting academic conferences.
There is a lot of inertia when you have an existing book. The “wiki book” experiment received attention because of our traditional textbook. Web content we developed originally received attention because of our traditional textbook. I had hoped that this same and expanded collection of web content would work in the opposite direction with the Kindle book. It doesn’t seem to have worked in this way. A few instructors seem to have adopted the Kindle book, but are not assigning much of the web content. We also seem to sell singles of the ebook and I had assumed we would get adoptions for more classes. I have never added a traditional paper book to the ebook which Amazon makes fairly easy. We had assumed that a “teaching with technology” resource would make the most sense requiring learners to learn from a digital resource. So, there are a few things I understand about this experience and some things I still don’t.
I intend to continue my little experiment and receive enough attention to keep going. College instruction is difficult to change and I still think the course type I have worked on for so long is likely to play a role in this change. I continue to promote the model I am trying to develop and I do see some movement in the model of traditional publishing companies. Books are still too large and too slow to change, but ebooks options are fairly common. There is some increase in web-based content such as book-related videos and maybe study guides, but the traditional approach still lacks the flexibility I think is quite practical, Textbooks still costs far too much. I don’t intend to work for a textbook company again, but I understand the financial problems that plague the textbook market and I appreciate the level of support you receive (editor, photographer, paid reviewers, marketing) as an author. Part of the impetus for change is going to have to come from educators who in this case are the decision-makers when it comes to making decisions for their courses. There seems more interest in open educational resources (OER) which I just don’t see ever getting very far (have already written free learning resources) than in exploring and pushing for more options from textbook companies. I guess we will see.
