Tag: book

I have been reading MediaActive (Dan Gillmor) which offers a vision for more participatory journalism (more on the book in another post). Gillmor cites a 1999 presentation by Andrew Grove (Intel) to newspaper editors. Grove draws on his own experiences with Intel in an effort to help editors counter the decline in their industry. Gillmor returns to the Grove comments to explain why even with warning established industries find it so difficult to innovate when innovation is demanded for survival.

Grove and Gillmor offer a couple of interesting insights. First, Gillmor argues it is difficult for industries that are essentially a monoculture to break out of the shared perspective of the industry. Second, Grove argues that the tendency to cut back in the face of a decline dooms an industry to decline. What Grove contends is the necessity to spend on innovation.

The monoculture thing may be a foreign concept. I am familiar with the term in reference to agriculture and the concern that standardizes on a common strain (say a type of wheat) puts the entire industry in jeopardy should some threat (a disease) be particularly well suited to destroy that strain. I suppose with newspapers the concern was that all papers were fairly similar.

I tend to translate (or perhaps transfer a lot when I read). I am less interested in journalism than I am in the generation of instructional materials. The participatory position Gillmor takes with journalism is related to one opportunity I see for the future of textbooks. Once seeing this connection, the similarities in Grove’s comments regarding newspapers and my observations regarding textbooks were an easy extension. Twenty some years ago, I remember reading a criticism of physics textbook that argued all books tended to approach the topic in a similar fashion (sorry there is no reference, 20 years is beyond my memories capacity for physics). The argument at that time was not related to the future of the book, but the notion that physicists were being trained from a similar perspective and innovation would be more likely given greater diversity in how professionals were trained to think about the content of the field. This is not the concern I have. In my field, educational technology, there are still books focused on standard tools (say Microsoft products) and there are others that take a broader perspective. Some take a “how to do it” approach and others attempt to offer a broader context including the justification for different proposed activities. Hence, the monoculture concern does not apply to the content of the books. It does, however, apply to the format the books take. The publishers seem reluctant to move away from full length books. I have long suggested that this is not appropriate to the topic – learning with technology is not modeled well using a book, nor is it appropriate to a field that advances very quickly.

Grove’s other concern is also obvious in the textbook industry. There is little innovation – little of what I would label R&D. This deficiency relates to the need to break out of the monoculture.

Like Gillmore, the transitions an industry faces are an opportunity for those with vision. The need for instructional content has not diminished.

We switched our textbook from a commercial publisher to Amazon a couple of years ago. The reasons were complex, but we have greater control over our new self-imposed model. One of the opportunities was to control what went in the book (we wanted to call it a Primer) and what resources we provided online. A book on tech applications, after all, should make some use of technology. A second desire was that we could write continuously instead of in the few months before the next edition was to be sent to press.

There are certainly challenges in Kindle publishing. The formatting is tricky and never seems to work out as intended. The revision has also been challenging to push out to those who already purchased the earlier version. The Amazon model supposedly allows updates to be pushed out to those who already made a purchase decision. It certainly sounds like this in the instructions. However, I have purchased a copy and to get the “automatic upgrade” I had to contact Amazon. The company was helpful, but the process should be easier.

The goal was to push out the revision so those instructors who were using the book in their classes would know that newer content was available for their students. Not having the book reps go door to door and promote a book is the one downside of self publishing. Convenience for the instructor is helpful. On the other hand, a sales force adds greatly to the cost students pay.

Grabe and Grabe revision is available through the Amazon store.

 

 

The generation and utilization of educational content has long been a personal interest. We have been lucky enough to have a book available since the mid-90s. We split with our publisher a couple of years ago because we wanted to explore a smaller and less expensive book in combination with more online content.  We were able to implement our plan by securing our copyright and updating our material as a Kindle ebook and online content.

We selected Kindle because it was cross platform with the iBook being limited to the iPad at that time. However, the flexibility of the iBook is attractive and iBook Author appears to be a great platform for generating content.

While I really like the iBook author platform, I do not get the Apple ibook plan. It does not seem suited to those of us who write for higher education courses because while you can expect students to have some type of device, you cannot really assume it will be an Apple product (now iPad or a system running Mavericks).

There is also the matter of price to the reader. I did a quick comparison of Kindle and iBook prices for the books I have finished within the last two months and the Kindle version is always a little lower. While I do most of my reading on an iPad, I read none of these books as an iBook.

Making thinking visible – 18.96, 19.99
Invent to learn – 9.99, NA
Reign of error – 11.99, 14.99
Teaching minds – 14.55, NA
One Click – 7.99, 9.99
The everything store – 10.99, 10.99
The mushroom hunters – 11.84, 11.99
The circle –    6.50 6.99

Higher cost and fewer hardware options for experiencing the content seems a bad combination to me.

A book that goes beyond text must be where Apple sees this going. Clearly, the present Kindle books are far more limited as far as this potential goes. However, none of the books I just listed here would have benefited from a more flexible format.

The kind of product that would really take advantage of the iBook format would be very expensive to generate for the college market. Multimedia content requires more sophistication involving multiple experts and typically requires a careful approach to the acquisition of permissions. It was the issue of permissions in combination with our desire to generate a far less expensive book that let to our break with our publisher. Even if an individual could generate a more complex product there are always those issues that require lawyers in a commercial venture. An approach that primarily relies on text is just easier to generate. Professional help such as a good editor can greatly improve the work of any author, but that is about all you need with a Kindle book.

Our plan is to revise our present book this summer for both platforms. If you tell yourself this is about exploring and not about money or time, it is sufficient to enjoy the creative process. The plan is to offer a Kindle plus online content version and an iBook version that incorporates more of the content we presently provide online. We will see how it goes.

Cengage, one of the major publishers of college textbooks, has filed for bankruptcy in an effort to stabilize the financial fortunes of the company. We had a relationship with Cengage for many years beginning when Cengage picked up our book when taking over the holdings of Houghton-Mifflin.

 

Chief executive Hanson claimed the step “will reduce our debt and improve our capital structure to support our long-term business strategy of transitioning from traditional print models to digital educational and research material”.

 

About five years ago, we tried to explain to Cengage that digital textbooks were coming and our book on the integration of technology would offer a great opportunity to explore new ways to offer content. We never were able to work out an agreement, but there is now some satisfaction in suggesting that they should have explored early instead of putting themselves in the position of trying to catch up.

This is the last in my series on our experiences in self publishing. The title of this post — Send lawyers, guns, and money — is the title of a Warren Zevon song (a favorite artist). Hopefully, the connection will become obvious given the focus of the rest of this post.

Based on our experience working with a publishing company and then attempting to offer a related product without this support, I thought our insight into what you give up when you make the decision to go it alone might be of some value.

First, you give up the collaborative relationship with an editor and the others the editor might enlist to offer advice on the development of a manuscript. As an example of what I mean by others, an editor might enlist several individuals who teach the course a book is intended to address to offer advice. I must say I found little value in the comments of course instructors toward the end. After moving through five editions, we have a sense of the priorities our book should address. There were always those who valued these priorities and those who obviously were looking for something else. The feedback from course instructors would reflect this diversity of opinion. Some would like our approach and others would identify and endorse topics we did not cover. For example, we have never spent a great deal of time focused on interactive white boards. For some, this is what you prepare teachers to use. For other instructors, either they would take care of this themselves or they did not believe it was a topic deserving much attention.

I always valued the contributions of an editor. The level of discussion was much more detailed. It is helpful to have an experienced neutral party work with you to assist you in saying the things you want to say. Sometimes the issue was how to cut 35 pages to meet some imposed price/page limit (no longer an issue). If such modifications are necessary, it is helpful to discuss options with someone experienced in making such adjustments. Writing style also requires a neutral perspective. It is easy to fall in love with your own way of saying something and it is useful to have someone tell you that the point is not clear.

The lawyers (hence the title). This is likely a group providing services most would not identify as important. Perhaps our experiences in this regard is a function of the type of resources we provide. Our books made use of classroom examples using various software applications and online services. When you use a story about a teacher, an example of student work, or an screen capture showing what a specific software program looks like in action, you must secure the permission of the relevant teacher, student, or company. We took care of the people requests ourselves – Cindy has many classroom contacts and nearly all of our classroom examples relied on these opportunities. We also have some contacts with companies and were able to obtain releases for some of the applications we described. The greatest challenges tended to me with the large companies (you can fill in the examples). Requests to use a particular screen image are not rejected – they are simply ignored. Our publishers also were ignored in some cases. My impression is that the lawyers would sometimes make a judgment call to go ahead without a signed permission.

As I have indicated in a previous post, the permissions issue is probably the main reason we were unable to reach an agreement in publishing a shorter book at a significantly lower cost while taking advantage of the opportunity to place additional resources online. My interpretation is that companies are very sensitive to the intellectual property of other companies (this is my attempt to interpret this in a positive way). To reach the point at which they are comfortable, they invest time (and hence money) in negotations and decision making. There is simply not sufficient margin in an inexpensive book to support such expenditures.

Finally, a commercial publishers invests heavily in marketing. College profs (including me) do not cast a wide net when it comes to finding an appropriate textbook. Mostly, we wait for a book rep to come to our office and explain what resources their company has available. This is often the starting point. Simply put, you consider the options you know about. The other mechanism I use is to spend time in the “exhibits hall” while attending research conferences (e.g., American Educational Research Association). The book companies subsidize such conferences by paying fees in order secure exhibit hall space to reveal their wares to instructors. Sending the reps to your office and paying for exhibit hall space costs a lot and such costs are rolled into the cost of the books sold. So, it is easy to sell an equivalent book for a lower cost, but this lower cost means it is much less likely course instructors will discover the book.

P.S. – ignore the guns thing. This just happened to be included in the title of the song. I stand behind the request for money and lawyers.