A Digital Future

The Association of American Publishers’ Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division hosted their annual conference this past week, with discussion centering on digital publishing. Publishers feel more and more that they need to adapt to a rapidly changing textbook market, and that to do so, they must embrace the digital movement.

But while they're busy discussing the role of copyright, open courseware continues to spread with lectures being posted on Academic Earth, and with YouTube allowing free downloads of lectures. And new business models continue to develop, too. Flatworld Knowledge is now up and running, with textbooks available in business and economics courses.

New theories continue to come forward as well, and one recent suggestion does away with the current distribution model:

It's time to shift the text-selling system from one between publishers and students to one between publishers and colleges. A consortium-style agreement between the latter two groups would make it advantageous for all publishers and higher-education institutions to participate. The consortium could charge participating colleges a single price for unlimited access, based on their number of full-time enrollments, or FTE's. Each college could then pass that charge on to students as part of tuition or through a dedicated fee, or even seek private donors to help defray the cost.

This sort of system has been suggested before, but has never taken off. However, a transition period is always the easiest in getting projects off the ground, and a push by a university could make such a project possible as both universities and publishers look increasingly towards a digital future.