e-textbooks


 * All e-textbooks and learning.**

This page highlights the new expanding market for e-textbooks vs regular printed version textbooks. It is felt that a comparative analysis of the market must be made in order to provide relevance to the topic and awareness of the emerging e-text market, and it's place in learning environments. For a great presentation on how open e-textbooks will open doors in education, view the presentation here.


 * The Open textbook Platform**

Open Educational Resources (OER Commons) - This site is rich with educational software, peer-reviewed e-textbooks to lesson plans, video lectures and worksheets. Everything is Creative Commons licensed and open to modification and adaptation. Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources - is a site containing open textbooks for the college community, Be sure tho check out the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative that catalogs textbooks by subject area and reviews of those books. Many school have joined forces to create the repository of adopt and adapt these open resources. CC-BY-NC-SA licenced material. Flat World Knowledge publishers claims to be the first and largest Open textbook publishers. However this is a for-profit organization offer many Creative Commons licensed materials for online viewing, free of charge, with ability to customize and modify, but charges for downloads and print. Thus there is a free accessible digital format however DRM applied to download and print, thus creating their business model to protect IP. Open Textbook Catalog - is a collection of customizable and printable online textbooks. This is a small organization that attempts to organize and rate open textbooks for other students. Open Textbook is a repository that catalogs textbook resources and updates links and sources for Open textbook material. Ck-12 has a large collection of Open Flexbooks with Open content. CC-BY-NC_SA licensed material. OpenStax College is another type of textbook source .. there is a small number of textbooks that have are licensed under Creative Commons Contribution 3.0 Unported License. This means the documents are free to view in pdf, web published formats. California Digital Textbook Initiative - Part of the initiative for greater use of OER materials as sources for learning content Connextions - a repository of educational content containing open licensed learning modules [|Textbook Media] - Small fee bur your textbooks Textbook Revolution - a good starting place for looking for free open e-textbooks Courseload - e-textbooks on demand BookBoon - download free textbooks


 * FREE but not OPEN Textbooks**

Materials that are generally classified as FREE but not open means they can usually be viewed on the internet but a re not open to be downloaded, printed, modified or adapted to any other use. Due to protecting intellectual property rights, the materials often have restrictions applied that allow viewing online only, and prevent downloading, scrubbing, any form of transmission and printing., Digital rights management ensures that copyright restrictions are managed. However, these books are viewable to the public thus can act as an important resource online.

OER Consortium is one example of these types of resource. ArXiv is an e-print archive by Cornell University. You can view the documents online


 * Textbook Publishers - new directions**

Once you've recognized that textbooks are just an assemblage of resources and that, in a digital world, there's no reason to bind it together and publish these en masse, then I think you can see a path to liberation from that industry model. You can disassemble, reassemble, unbundle, disrupt, destroy the textbook. It is truly an irrelevant format.

2. Used textbook recycling One of the most popular sites is Chegg which markets specifically to tertiary level students and used textbook markets.The fact they have procured over $250 million in this venture indicates that there is some significant market potential in this area.

3. Is open textbooks cost effective. There are more and more opportunities and calculations regarding the open textbook and cost for schools. Schools tend to pursue the Freemium model as much as possible and are moving away from the publishing consumerism model for proprietary content. However this is the established norm for intellectual property and has the quality and depth required, thus this is the predominant business model. However, certain aspects of free textbooks are changing. A good example of the new model is demonstrated with the Principles of Biology interactive textbook and it's related companion Cachalot, the free iPad app.

The cost of open textbooks. Here is another view of the value of textbook versus some models of digital content.

The $5 dollar textbook.media type="custom" key="13086020"


 * The e-textbook market**

It is widely reported that the current market penetration of e-textbooks is currently at about 3%. This has been growing at a rate of 100% per year for a few years. The rate of growth in this market is expected to follow rapid growth, as depicted in the following graph created by Rob Reynolds.

If this trend signifies the changing landscape then we will see some significant changes into the generation and marketing of digital learning content in the years to come. Further to this, the use of digital content will lead to significant changes in the classroom. This transition will lead to some significant changes for the transition to digital content, including:
 * publishers will adopt new business models to market digital content
 * publishers will change their pricing structure, with pressure from OER repositories
 * market will become more diverse as more self-publishing entities emerge
 * decline in textbook rentals
 * growth in OER resources
 * new channels to market digital products and services, not just textbooks to offset printed sales
 * the formation of digital chunks (e-booklets) vs e-textbooks as the new published entity
 * more dynamic content and reusable components
 * greater emergence of curation, aggregation and bounding tools

All these factors will continue to push digital content (e-textbooks) into learning environments and transform the classroom around manipulating digital objects. This transformation will cause a dramatic shift away form the printed textbook sales and increase sales channels for digital products and services. Teachers will be required to adjust their teaching as we move towards embedding digital learning into the digital minds.

References: http://thelearninglot.blogspot.ca/2012/03/e-textbook-market-remains-on-course-to.html