Articles Posted in K12 Publishing

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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 3 years this will continue until at least 2014.

I can remember entire decades where budget flows were so steady that you could predict the entire year within +/- 10% after the first three months. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 the first half of each year told you very little about the second half.

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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 recently survey by MDR reveals that Moodle has the largest installed base of Learning Management systems (LMS) in K-12. Equally interesting is that Moodle’s strongest presence is in large districts. These districts have the IT infrastructure to support the development and customization of an open source platform.

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broken_glassToday’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 themselves to be crushed by Lowes this probably sounds foolish. Why shouldn’t Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt do the same in education? In their business model everything becomes a commodity and low prices rule. Indeed – that is precisely what has happened over the past couple of decades in education.

But there are fundamental and intersecting trends that are leading us away from this model and in a fresh new direction.

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HAG16Over 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). Bigger warehouses, off-shoring production, distribution networks built on fleets of professional salespeople, and access to capital drove smaller players into the arms of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin (Harcourt), and Scholastic.

We can see that they became huge – but what were the market forces that drove them to do this?

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meteor_impact_2003.gifAn 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 piece I’m going to publish in the next few days. Mark Sumner’s “The Evolution of Everything” got me thinking about our industry in biological terms as we enter this era of rapid change.

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noosetie50% 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 look like a Book Rep.

This sartorial mis-match of rhetoric and reality summed up a lot of what I observed. Publishers are saying all the right things, but they haven’t quite figured out how to do them.

Educational Publishing Leaders

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WindowsAlbumSetWhen 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 at The Shatzkin Files. His framing is concise and revealing for those of us mapping out strategy for the analog to digital transition in instructional materials.

He was on a working group preparing for a talk about copyright across different publishing markets:

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“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 what we are doing specifically at PCI, but given that this is an unorthodox move in these economic times I thought I’d lay out the case for the acquisition.

These intervention programs target reading or math and they fit snugly into our line of products for academically challenged students. They are age appropriate for middle and high school students who are significantly behind grade-level expectations and need intensive, small-group instruction.

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IMG_0069.jpgIn 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.

He then goes on to rend the idea to tiny shreds. Its an enjoyable read because he brings common sense and an attitude to area rife with guessing and angst.

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748065_piratesScribd 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 obligation to screen for copyright protection. Copyright holders have to proactively scan and search for their content. Get it taken down today – it can be uploaded again tomorrow morning.

For example, Key Curriculum Press’s “Discovering Advanced Algebra” is available for anyone to download all 888 pages for free (and has been since last August when it was posted by “skihe63”). It has been accessed 8,898 times since it was loaded less than a year ago. It is an older copyright, but still – on Amazon it sells for $25. That is $222k in value.

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