Are textbooks dead?
I spent a small chunk of my life proofreading and editing textbooks for the university market. Seems sad it’s all over. Or is it?
Digitising books has been a major activity by publishers for over thirty years. But now some major textbook publishers view the resource, the stock, not as books, in whatever form, but as the people who access their databanks.
For 177 years Pearson has been one of the biggest players in the textbook market. But things have been grim for textbooks. Pearson has been issuing profit warnings for years. The US student market is squeezed. Covid has shrunk the take-up of college places. Online learning and digital platforms have eroded the once vibrant cash cow of publishing. Students are poorer than ever.
A Pearson textbook has seven lives. It is bought new then resold on average six times before it is binned or put in someone’s attic forever. Pearson only sees profit from the first sale, of course! Pearson had to do something to stop the steady fall in profits.
So burn the books!
There’s a new man at Pearson, Andy Bird. He was a big shot at Disney, marketing films. Very good at it. I am sure he’s not into burning books, but he’s got to make a profit.
Pearson have brought him in to revolutionise textbook publishing. To, as they might put it, monetise the vast resource which is stored in the Pearson textbooks. But how?
Well, put simply, students won’t buy books. They’ll buy an app. A subscription app. For about £10 a month they will access the Pearson digitised resource. Their textbooks.
Pearson will describe itself as a digital learning media company not an educational publisher.
Human resources
This app had better be good. 177 years of history rides on it. Take-up will have to be great. Students will have to feel positive as will their teachers. Sales will have to be rapid. Marketing will need to be phenomenally good.
Of course, the digitised resources (books) will still have to be written by humans. Editors will edit; proofreaders will proofread. Some things will stay the same. But textbooks will be a relic, a fond memory. It may take a few years. A transition period, but it will happen.
Where’s the profit?
Do you wonder how the money will be made? As with free digital learning platforms there are two ways of looking at content. A profitable resource in itself or a means to another end?
Some digital trainers award degrees with no fees but take a cut of graduates’ pay! Some just give their courses away and collect the human data.
The world ticks on data now, not content. We all know how data is monetised, don’t we? We are the resource. On Twitter, on Facebook, Instagram. Where we roam we are monitored, followed, analysed, monetised.
Students are the resource. Warehouses won’t groan with books but computers will ache with student data. It’s a new order. Inevitable and sad.
The good news? Proofreading and editing textbooks will always be necessary, even when there are no more textbooks to proofread and edit. Whatever form information takes it has to be edited, proofread and well-presented to the market. Poor content pushes through to poor sales. Proofreaders and editors are the gatekeepers of high standards.