Battling the Textbook-Industrial Complex: One Indy Publisher's Perspective
“The thing is, it’s going to be a Microsoft vs. Google battle. Box isn’t even in the picture. We get squeezed as the two giants tangle. They can afford to subsidize storage to get users on their platform.”
The quote above is from a letter written by Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box.net, to one of his board members a few years ago. He included it in an article over at Fast Company’s site, in which he describes how his small startup has managed to navigate a jungle dominated by “giants” and not only survive but thrive. (As it happens, we are a Box.net customer, having moved all of our company files and documents to their site a few months ago.) Although we are not a technology company, we find ourselves dealing with many of the same issues that Aaron and Box.net encountered a few years ago (and no doubt are still facing). For example:
- We are trying to build and sustain a product in an industry dominated by powerful giants.
- We are continually grappling with the question of price, as industry forces continually drive down prices (often for good reason).
- While we can’t compete with the giants on resources, we can see opportunity as those giants worry about how to protect their legacy products and build new, grandly ambitious ones. In our case, we can focus entirely on meeting the needs of our customers and users without worrying about how to salvage our traditional printed textbooks–of which we have none.
Our good friend and advisor Jonathan Rees has fairly accurately described that old-guard business as the “textbook-industrial complex.” As he writes in a recent blog post, this complex consists of “an army of poorly paid writers who are popping out new editions of your textbook every year or two whether you actually need a new edition or not.” That situation is one of the chief reasons that we launched Milestone Documents, our online primary source reader. We feel strongly that the textbook paradigm is broken, and that professors and students alike deserve a better product at a cheaper price.
In fact, as Jonathan points out, many professors are ditching their textbooks for other reasons too–aside from being expensive, they are often also boring and dull. And at least in the field of history, the textbooks are designed around teaching the traditional “coverage” model, which requires that professors race through as many events and eras as possible, an approach that an increasing number of professors see as impossible. Why not get rid of that approach entirely, and focus on teaching students to think critically–and learn the craft of history–by examining a more manageable number of key themes and issues?
But back to the industry giants: As I mentioned, like the Googles and Microsofts of the world, they are battling for control of larger things than mere textbooks. Witness the latest salvo by Pearson, which is now attempting to grasp the one ring to rule them all, via it’s OpenClass LMS platform. This development has kicked off a lot of very interesting chatter in the blogosphere, from Michael Feldstein to Music for Deck Chairs.
Here’s the thing: The textbook-industrial complex, the (highly questionable) rush toward online learning, the LMS platform battles–it’s all connected. Higher education costs too much on every level, whether we’re talking tuition or LMS systems or textbooks. And, just as importantly, those expenses are not driving learning and understanding. That’s where companies like us come in: we can do one small part of the ecosystem better (at least we think we can). And I’m betting there are other companies that can and will tackle other aspects of the ecosystem too.