Education spending patterns have been abnormal for several years. Publishing used to follow very predictable patterns – no more. Between the Great Recession and ARRA Stimulus funds we have been living in an era of seesaw budgets for three years. Since education spending lags the general economy by up to…
Education publishers and Learning Management Systems have a long and somewhat checkered history. Open source publishing, XML, and content digitization are changing the LMS landscape rapidly. In today’s guest post Louise Dube outlines the issues facing companies creating instructional materials. By Louise Dube What to do? Educator Buying Trends, a…
Today’s walkabout focuses on a fundamental shift in the instructional materials industry away from the scale economics of the big textbook publishers to the value of niche focused expertise. I believe this is the future of our business. In a world where Home Depot crushes the local hardware store only…
Over the past couple of decades education publishing has been characterized by waves of consolidation into a handful of giant conglomerates. This is a typical pattern in an industry as products commoditize. If products are effectively interchangeable (commodities) competitors gain competitive advantage through industrial scale cost management (economies of scale).…
An understatement – education publishing is changing. Heck, publishing writ large (trade books, music, movies, news, etc.) is shifting in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Textbooks are one of the last little corners of the intellectual property world to enter this new era. Today’s post is a teaser for a longer…
50% of the men did not wear neck ties at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Traditional publishers are struggling with appropriate responses to digital transformation and aping the casual style of Silicon Valley seems to be popular. Interesting fact – if you wear a suit without a tie you still…
When textbooks go fully digital what will schools buy? Will they buy individual lessons, units of 2-3 weeks length, or full curriculum that span a year the way they do today? This is the $5 billion question facing our industry. Mike Shatzkin has an excellent post on this topic over…
“With the right support and intervention…people with learning disabilities can succeed in school and go on to be successful later in life.” Wikipedia Last week PCI acquired SpellRead, Momentum Math, Text Connections, Summer Ventures, and an unreleased Algebra program from Kaplan. I don’t normally use this blog to talk about…
In discussing the potential for ads in e-books – the latest hail mary pass of traditional media – Paul Carr at TechCrunch dropped this gem: It’s a compelling argument, but like so many compelling arguments made about the future of books, it’s also hampered by consisting almost entirely of bullshit.…
Scribd is working hard to be the text version of YouTube. Upload some text, tag it, and let the world discover it. It isn’t just unpublished novels – many copyrighted textbooks are already there via unauthorized uploads. Like YouTube, users can upload anything and the site isn’t under any legal…