still using trees
I have yet to purchase an eReader, and am still a paper book devotee. Part of the reason I enjoy paper books is that I enjoy the process of browsing bookstores and libraries, and that’s usually where I’m inspired to buy or borrow.
When I first got my iPhone, I downloaded a few free e-books and attempted to read them on the bus to work, but that didn’t last long. I realize that e-readers like the Kindle offer a much better reading experience than the iPhone, and I can see the advantage of being able to transport numerous books in one tiny tool (and would love to have all my MET articles loaded on one device).
However, when I’m studying the process of underlining, highlighting or making notes in the margin helps me to stay focused on the text and make the most useful content easily accessible when I need it. I’m not sure if the annotation tools in some of the eReaders would work as effectively for me – I guess I’ll need to try it out!
For business opportunities, I can see how publishers could offer schools ‘affordable’ upgrades to get the latest edition, and this could easily be an annual source of income. It would also be possible to offer customizable textbooks, so that people selected the chapters and topics that were most relevant to them, or license outside articles for additional fees. There are also so many possibilities around connecting audio and video, and different pricing structures could be used for different options. It will be interesting to see how things develop in the years to come.
Posted in: Week 06: eBooks
David William Price 4:52 pm on October 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
” It would also be possible to offer customizable textbooks, so that people selected the chapters and topics that were most relevant to them”
Great point. I may be doing a textbook with my adviser and he’s been talking about using this approach. A modular approach would allow us to pitch our text to different markets and provide suitable pricing based on the market (student, professional, etc.)
Kristopher 1:22 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We’ve been trying to do a similar thing at the organization where I work. We train people in pre-hospital emergency medical care, but the provincial legislation is different in each province. This requires something a little more dynamic than traditional textbooks that we have just begun to explore an eBook as the option. Good luck with your text book!
jenaca 11:41 pm on October 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey Andrea,
To add onto what Daivd has said, I really like the point you made. I’ve never thought of creating textbooks that way and I think it would be very beneficial!
How difficult is it to get a license to do this?
Jenaca
bcourey 3:59 pm on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Since textbooks in Canada are written to include the curriculum expectations of MANY provinces, I would love to pick and choose pieces from textbooks and “create’ my own and then offer it to students to read online – they would love to reduce the weight in their backpacks and just read those articles that I find relevant…I already did that with textbooks and the students complained that they had to carry the heavy books even though I used only about a quarter of the content – I prefer electronic texts that have interaction, video, audio – many of my learning disabled students needed the text to speech features of the online texts.
Kristopher 1:20 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Andrew (and all),
I am still a paper reader myself even though I think of myself generally as an early adapter. I am not a huge pleasure reader (or haven’t been for a couple of years), but your experience of browsing the bookstores and libraries reminds me a little of my experience with movies. I use to enjoy going into the local video rental place and browsing for a new release with my favourite actors and seeing what else was out there, but now I find that anything that I am interested in I have already seen. I work from home and have a constant stream of television / movie / noise going on, so often times I have already seen (or heard at least) many of the movies. I have found that stopping at the video store is a waste of time because I already have looked through what was released in the last couple of months. I can imagine that if I was looking for more pleasure reading it would be a similar experience.
ashleyross 9:23 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Kristopher,
My husband and I have a similar experience with movies. We used to go to Blockbuster & Best Buy to check out new releases but in the past few years it has decreased dramatically and now we seem to use our AppleTV to check out new releases and watch trailers. We both prefer to read e-books rather than paper but we still wander through bookstores to find new books we are interested in. Instead of buying the paper book we take a picture of the cover and then go find it on the internet. I think it’s interesting that we’ve fully committed to the online experience of buying movies & watching trailers through AppleTV but when it comes to e-books although we prefer reading digital copies verses paper we still like to find most of our books through bookstores and paper books.
mcquaid 8:25 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Andrea, your “still using trees” heading reminded me of an email from years ago, talking about this new invention called “book”. It didn’t need electricity, it didn’t need updates, etc. It also brought to mind a book we have for our little guy here at home, called “It’s a Book”.
You can watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BK_2VULCU
I wonder if the order of things was in reverse, would we see books as superior to e-readers? They’re definitely more ecologically-friendly, aren’t they? The inevitable amount of e-waste this new wave of devices will create also had me thinking of another very-worth-watching video, “The Story of Electronics”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78
Decades down the road, I wonder what our more earth-friendly tech solution will be…
andrea 8:58 pm on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Steve, thanks for those really interesting links! You got me wondering about the green-ness of books versus e-readers, so I did a bit of research. According to GigaOM and research from the Green Press Initiative, “an iPad is responsible for 130 kg (287 lbs) of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions over its average lifetime. The average printed book, by contrast, is responsible for only 8.85 lbs. So, an iPad owner needs only download 32.4 books instead of purchasing paper copies in order to reach the break even point when it comes to carbon footprint” (http://gigaom.com/apple/is-reading-on-your-ipad-more-green-than-paper-books/).
Deb Giesbrecht 7:08 am on October 16, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting links.
I have often wondered about being greener with ewaste. I know from ads that hundreds of thousands of cell phones are thrown out over North America every week.
At work, I tried to purchase my own computer after the lease came up. Not that it was a great computer, but I did not want to see it go to the dump. I was told I could not do that as the hard drive is destroyed and the rest of it went ???where. Anyway, the point is that even if I wanted to be green, I could not. The corporation would not allow it.