Next-Gen Publishing

I am curious to see what the future holds for the good-old-fashioned textbook in higher education. When I was in college, I would not have even considered not buying the required textbook for a class. Now, statistically, one third of all students make that decision believing they can get through the class by getting information from other means (the Internet) or borrowing the text from a fellow classmate.

Educational publishers are also branching out into other industries, most notably distance learning and electronic resources. Many run their own course management system and Pearson now owns eCollege, one of the first course management systems commercially available.

If I could look into a crystal ball, here would be some my predictions for these publishing giants:

• Soft cover books will become the norm and black & white printouts on-demand will be the primary source for hard copy content.
• Textbook content will be available online for students to download—a repository so to speak. These books can be printed, read onscreen or read with an ebook reader such as the Kindle.
• Course management systems will be able to access textbook content virtually. Rather than download the content to a specific university server, the content will be accessed from a site, and appear to be an integrated part of the course.
• The bookstore will become a store for supplies and college branded clothes and paraphernalia as book sales move totally online.
• Costs will go down as advertising revenue begins to supplement profits.
• The relationship with textbook authors will change as they work to make content more elastic - like a living document - where versioning will be unheard of and will include input from teachers and students.

Only time will tell. Use the comment field to provide your own predictions.