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iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

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Owen Densmore

iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Administrator

Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101

Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even though the kindle itself is black/white only.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Robert Holmes

Re: iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Hmmm... strikes me as another attempt to extract rents from an already monopolistic market ("you must use textbook X for this course and you will pay Y"). 80% off list price for a 30 day rental? So if I want it for a year, that's about 240% of list price....? Nice business model.

—R

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101

Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even though the kindle itself is black/white only.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Owen Densmore

Re: iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Administrator

OReilly's Safari likely would be better: a fixed price ($22/mo for standard) for a fixed number of books (10 for standard) that can change over time.

OReilly has been bring in other publishers, so may include textbooks eventually. Still, as you point out, its not cheap .. > $200/year .. but that's less than the textbooks themselves.

It is a bit awkward: you get "online" access to your entire "shelf" but not download access, which is metered out a bit at a time using "download" tokens for parts of a book as a pdf. Probably can game the system, but basically there isn't a way yet to own a pdf yet lend it to someone. DRM of some sort.

Do you know how UK's Open University handles text books? I believe its fully accredited, right?

-- Owen

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hmmm... strikes me as another attempt to extract rents from an already monopolistic market ("you must use textbook X for this course and you will pay Y"). 80% off list price for a 30 day rental? So if I want it for a year, that's about 240% of list price....? Nice business model.

—R

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101

Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even though the kindle itself is black/white only.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Robert Holmes

Re: iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

I hope the Open University is accredited, that's where I got my MBA!

They had an interesting approach in the late 90s ( don't know if is the same now): course fees included textbooks, so a week after signing up you would get a big box through the mail full of the textbooks you would need for the year. Saved a lot of time!
--Robert

On Jul 19, 2011 11:37 AM, "Owen Densmore" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Edward Angel

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.

I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example, AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.

But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.

All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we don't feel very good about the situation.

__________

Ed Angel

Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
http://artslab.unm.edu

http://sfcomplex.org

On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101

Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even though the kindle itself is black/white only.

-- Owen

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex "discuss" group.
To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[hidden email]
For more options, visit this group at
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Bruce Sherwood

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
over the web.

The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.

Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
inventory.

An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
their college textbooks.

One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.

Bruce

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
> don't feel very good about the situation.
> Ed
>
> __________
> Ed Angel
>
> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
> http://artslab.unm.edu
> http://sfcomplex.org
> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>
> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
> -- Owen
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex
> "discuss" group.
> To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> [hidden email]
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

Eric Charles

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

In reply to this post by Edward Angel

Bruce,
Very nice! For these and several other reasons, electronic formats might just save the textbook. They also offers the possibility to undercut the used book market - which 1) drives the continuous worthless revisions, 2) makes it very difficult for publishers to take a risk on a textbook with fundamentally new ideas, and 3) make prices on textbooks so high that students often face huge pressure to sell-back.

I'd love to stay updated on your work integrating 3D animations into electronic textbooks. I recently initiated a group-project to write a textbook on perception. One disadvantage that the Ecological approach to perception (which I advocate) faces, is that it is very difficult to represent the concepts in 2 dimensional, still images - where as traditional approaches to perception lend themselves quite well to such a presentation. Several people on the project would be interested in trying to create a more interactive experience for the students.

Eric

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 04:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
over the web.

The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.

Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
inventory.

An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
their college textbooks.

One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.

Bruce

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the
internet
> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more
than
> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than
the
> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the
death
> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties
stay
> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
> don't feel very good about the situation.
> Ed
>
> __________
> Ed Angel
>
> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]
> 505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>   http://artslab.unm.edu
> http://sfcomplex.org
> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>
> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
>     http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time.  And
I
> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
>         -- Owen
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe
Complex
> "discuss" group.
> To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> [hidden email]
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

Edward Angel

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

In reply to this post by Bruce Sherwood

As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where writing notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical book.

One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless I have a very good website to provide additional support (ppt lectures, electronic versions of all figures, programs, etc) I lose a lot of adopters. As Bruce knows that's a lot of work.

The analogy between book reps and pharmaceutical reps is interesting. However there is an order of magnitude difference in renumeration. I've known health science faculty to give up tenure to become drug reps but I have never seen that happen with a physics or engineering faculty member.

However, in both cases the job of the rep has changed from knowing a lot about the product to being able to get into a faculty office and get samples to someone who really doesn't want to talk to you.

In NM, most UNM students are self-supporting and wind up buying their own textbooks. There has been a huge cultural shift which goes beyond the money issue. I would never think of selling a book after taking a class but students today have an entirely different attitude towards media. Of course when a biology 101 textbook costs $250 (really does) the $$ matter.

What does seem to be changing is the popularity of on-line courses. At UNM there are now 8000 student enrollments in such classes each semester. For many years I fought against such classes as not being up to the standards of a live class with real interaction. But with the new tools available to put together on-line courses and to interact with students on-line, I'm reconsidering my view. Perhaps that's where Bruce and I might find a lot of agreement. With an on-line format, students can access a lot of 3D demos and all kinds of other material that could not be in a physical book. I'm going to develop such a course this fall.

__________

Ed Angel

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
http://artslab.unm.edu

http://sfcomplex.org

On Jul 23, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:

I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
over the web.

The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.

Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
inventory.

An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
their college textbooks.

One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.

Bruce

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
don't feel very good about the situation.
Ed

__________
Ed Angel

Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
(ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
http://artslab.unm.edu
http://sfcomplex.org
On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
though the kindle itself is black/white only.
-- Owen
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex
"discuss" group.
To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[hidden email]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Greg Sonnenfeld

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

In college, I had a tablet I would use often for note taking and
homework assignments, The few e-books I had greatly simplified the
homework process, as i could cut and paste homework problems and
diagrams from the book into my homework and mark them up.

I look forward to the day where e-text books are fully interactive,
where students could perform simulations, write codes, or write and
submit there homework within fields and figures in the book ( which
would ideally be done on a tablet with a stylus). I'm betting a
prototype of such a book could be made using CDF. Though, I think a
great deal of iteration would be needed to give the book a fluid feel
that would satisfy most textbook consumers.

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will
> make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where
> writing notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical
> book.
> One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless I have a
> very good website to provide additional support (ppt lectures, electronic
> versions of all figures, programs, etc) I lose a lot of adopters. As Bruce
> knows that's a lot of work.
> The analogy between book reps and pharmaceutical reps is interesting.
> However there is an order of magnitude difference in renumeration. I've
> known health science faculty to give up tenure to become drug reps but I
> have never seen that happen with a physics or engineering faculty member.
> However, in both cases the job of the rep has changed from knowing a lot
> about the product to being able to get into a faculty office and get samples
> to someone who really doesn't want to talk to you.
> In NM, most UNM students are self-supporting and wind up buying their own
> textbooks. There has been a huge cultural shift which goes beyond the money
> issue. I would never think of selling a book after taking a class but
> students today have an entirely different attitude towards media. Of course
> when a biology 101 textbook costs $250 (really does) the $$ matter.
> What does seem to be changing is the popularity of on-line courses. At UNM
> there are now 8000 student enrollments in such classes each semester. For
> many years I fought against such classes as not being up to the standards of
> a live class with real interaction. But with the new tools available to put
> together on-line courses and to interact with students on-line, I'm
> reconsidering my view. Perhaps that's where Bruce and I might find a lot of
> agreement. With an on-line format, students can access a lot of 3D demos and
> all kinds of other material that could not be in a physical book. I'm going
> to develop such a course this fall.
> Ed
> __________
> Ed Angel
>
> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
> http://artslab.unm.edu
> http://sfcomplex.org
> On Jul 23, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>
> I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
> work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
> education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
> gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
> for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
> group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
> bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
> over the web.
>
> The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
> to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
> higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
> get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
> should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
> pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
> fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
> prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.
>
> Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
> spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
> bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
> inventory.
>
> An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
> pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
> gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
> presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
> their college textbooks.
>
> One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
> imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
> a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
> attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
> work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
> animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.
>
> Bruce
>
> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
>
> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
>
> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
>
> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
>
> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
>
> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
>
> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
>
> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
>
> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
>
> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
>
> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
>
> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
>
> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
>
> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
>
> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
>
> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
>
> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
>
> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
>
> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
>
> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
>
> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
>
> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
>
> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
>
> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
>
> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
>
> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
>
> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
>
> don't feel very good about the situation.
>
> Ed
>
> __________
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>
> (ARTS Lab)
>
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>
> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>
> http://artslab.unm.edu
>
> http://sfcomplex.org
>
> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>
> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
>
> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
>
> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
>
> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
>
> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
>
> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
>
> -- Owen
>
> --
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex
>
> "discuss" group.
>
> To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>
> [hidden email]
>
> For more options, visit this group at
>
> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss
>
>
> ============================================================
>
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

Bruce Sherwood

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Clearly, this is very much a moving target.

After scrolls were first introduced, was there a lot of innovation
getting the handles just right?

There is an absolutely wonderful video on how to use something called
a "book" in a medieval monastery, produced by Norwegian TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek

Bruce

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:

> In college, I had a tablet I would use often for note taking and
> homework assignments, The few e-books I had greatly simplified the
> homework process, as i could cut and paste homework problems and
> diagrams from the book into my homework and mark them up.
>
> I look forward to the day where e-text books are fully interactive,
> where students could perform simulations, write codes, or write and
> submit there homework within fields and figures in the book ( which
> would ideally be done on a tablet with a stylus). I'm betting a
> prototype of such a book could be made using CDF. Though, I think a
> great deal of iteration would be needed to give the book a fluid feel
> that would satisfy most textbook consumers.
>
> ****************************
> Greg Sonnenfeld
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will
>> make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where
>> writing notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical
>> book.
>> One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless I have a
>> very good website to provide additional support (ppt lectures, electronic
>> versions of all figures, programs, etc) I lose a lot of adopters. As Bruce
>> knows that's a lot of work.
>> The analogy between book reps and pharmaceutical reps is interesting.
>> However there is an order of magnitude difference in renumeration. I've
>> known health science faculty to give up tenure to become drug reps but I
>> have never seen that happen with a physics or engineering faculty member.
>> However, in both cases the job of the rep has changed from knowing a lot
>> about the product to being able to get into a faculty office and get samples
>> to someone who really doesn't want to talk to you.
>> In NM, most UNM students are self-supporting and wind up buying their own
>> textbooks. There has been a huge cultural shift which goes beyond the money
>> issue. I would never think of selling a book after taking a class but
>> students today have an entirely different attitude towards media. Of course
>> when a biology 101 textbook costs $250 (really does) the $$ matter.
>> What does seem to be changing is the popularity of on-line courses. At UNM
>> there are now 8000 student enrollments in such classes each semester. For
>> many years I fought against such classes as not being up to the standards of
>> a live class with real interaction. But with the new tools available to put
>> together on-line courses and to interact with students on-line, I'm
>> reconsidering my view. Perhaps that's where Bruce and I might find a lot of
>> agreement. With an on-line format, students can access a lot of 3D demos and
>> all kinds of other material that could not be in a physical book. I'm going
>> to develop such a course this fall.
>> Ed
>> __________
>> Ed Angel
>>
>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>> (ARTS Lab)
>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>
>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>> http://sfcomplex.org
>> On Jul 23, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>>
>> I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
>> work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
>> education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
>> gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
>> for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
>> group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
>> bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
>> over the web.
>>
>> The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
>> to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
>> higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
>> get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
>> should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
>> pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
>> fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
>> prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.
>>
>> Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
>> spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
>> bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
>> inventory.
>>
>> An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
>> pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
>> gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
>> presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
>> their college textbooks.
>>
>> One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
>> imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
>> a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
>> attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
>> work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
>> animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
>>
>> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
>>
>> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
>>
>> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
>>
>> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
>>
>> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
>>
>> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
>>
>> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
>>
>> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
>>
>> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
>>
>> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
>>
>> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
>>
>> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
>>
>> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
>>
>> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
>>
>> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
>>
>> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
>>
>> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
>>
>> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
>>
>> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
>>
>> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
>>
>> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
>>
>> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
>>
>> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
>>
>> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
>>
>> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
>>
>> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
>>
>> don't feel very good about the situation.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>> __________
>>
>> Ed Angel
>>
>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>>
>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>>
>> (ARTS Lab)
>>
>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>
>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>>
>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>
>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>>
>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>>
>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>>
>> http://sfcomplex.org
>>
>> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>
>> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
>>
>> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
>>
>> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
>>
>> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
>>
>> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
>>
>> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
>>
>> -- Owen
>>
>> --
>>
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex
>>
>> "discuss" group.
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
>>
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>>
>> [hidden email]
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>>
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

Greg Sonnenfeld

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Ah thats quite a funny video.

If you could clarify what you meant via the scrolls and handles
analogy, I would be appreciative.

Thanks,
Greg Sonnenfeld

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Bruce Sherwood
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Clearly, this is very much a moving target.
>
> After scrolls were first introduced, was there a lot of innovation
> getting the handles just right?
>
> There is an absolutely wonderful video on how to use something called
> a "book" in a medieval monastery, produced by Norwegian TV:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek
>
> Bruce
>
> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> In college, I had a tablet I would use often for note taking and
>> homework assignments, The few e-books I had greatly simplified the
>> homework process, as i could cut and paste homework problems and
>> diagrams from the book into my homework and mark them up.
>>
>> I look forward to the day where e-text books are fully interactive,
>> where students could perform simulations, write codes, or write and
>> submit there homework within fields and figures in the book ( which
>> would ideally be done on a tablet with a stylus). I'm betting a
>> prototype of such a book could be made using CDF. Though, I think a
>> great deal of iteration would be needed to give the book a fluid feel
>> that would satisfy most textbook consumers.
>>
>> ****************************
>> Greg Sonnenfeld
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>> As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will
>>> make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where
>>> writing notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical
>>> book.
>>> One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless I have a
>>> very good website to provide additional support (ppt lectures, electronic
>>> versions of all figures, programs, etc) I lose a lot of adopters. As Bruce
>>> knows that's a lot of work.
>>> The analogy between book reps and pharmaceutical reps is interesting.
>>> However there is an order of magnitude difference in renumeration. I've
>>> known health science faculty to give up tenure to become drug reps but I
>>> have never seen that happen with a physics or engineering faculty member.
>>> However, in both cases the job of the rep has changed from knowing a lot
>>> about the product to being able to get into a faculty office and get samples
>>> to someone who really doesn't want to talk to you.
>>> In NM, most UNM students are self-supporting and wind up buying their own
>>> textbooks. There has been a huge cultural shift which goes beyond the money
>>> issue. I would never think of selling a book after taking a class but
>>> students today have an entirely different attitude towards media. Of course
>>> when a biology 101 textbook costs $250 (really does) the $$ matter.
>>> What does seem to be changing is the popularity of on-line courses. At UNM
>>> there are now 8000 student enrollments in such classes each semester. For
>>> many years I fought against such classes as not being up to the standards of
>>> a live class with real interaction. But with the new tools available to put
>>> together on-line courses and to interact with students on-line, I'm
>>> reconsidering my view. Perhaps that's where Bruce and I might find a lot of
>>> agreement. With an on-line format, students can access a lot of 3D demos and
>>> all kinds of other material that could not be in a physical book. I'm going
>>> to develop such a course this fall.
>>> Ed
>>> __________
>>> Ed Angel
>>>
>>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>>> (ARTS Lab)
>>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>>
>>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>>> http://sfcomplex.org
>>> On Jul 23, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>>>
>>> I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
>>> work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
>>> education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
>>> gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
>>> for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
>>> group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
>>> bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
>>> over the web.
>>>
>>> The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
>>> to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
>>> higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
>>> get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
>>> should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
>>> pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
>>> fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
>>> prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.
>>>
>>> Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
>>> spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
>>> bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
>>> inventory.
>>>
>>> An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
>>> pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
>>> gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
>>> presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
>>> their college textbooks.
>>>
>>> One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
>>> imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
>>> a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
>>> attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
>>> work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
>>> animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.
>>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
>>>
>>> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
>>>
>>> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
>>>
>>> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
>>>
>>> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
>>>
>>> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
>>>
>>> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
>>>
>>> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
>>>
>>> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
>>>
>>> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
>>>
>>> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
>>>
>>> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
>>>
>>> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
>>>
>>> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
>>>
>>> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
>>>
>>> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
>>>
>>> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
>>>
>>> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
>>>
>>> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
>>>
>>> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
>>>
>>> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
>>>
>>> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
>>>
>>> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
>>>
>>> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
>>>
>>> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
>>>
>>> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
>>>
>>> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
>>>
>>> don't feel very good about the situation.
>>>
>>> Ed
>>>
>>> __________
>>>
>>> Ed Angel
>>>
>>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>>>
>>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>>>
>>> (ARTS Lab)
>>>
>>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>>
>>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>>>
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>>
>>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>>>
>>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>>>
>>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>>>
>>> http://sfcomplex.org
>>>
>>> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
>>>
>>> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
>>>
>>> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
>>>
>>> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
>>>
>>> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
>>>
>>> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
>>>
>>> -- Owen
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Santa Fe Complex
>>>
>>> "discuss" group.
>>>
>>> To post to this group, send email to [hidden email]
>>>
>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>>>
>>> [hidden email]
>>>
>>> For more options, visit this group at
>>>
>>> http://groups.google.com/a/sfcomplex.org/group/discuss
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>>
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

Bruce Sherwood

Re: [sfx: Discuss] iClarified - Apple News - Amazon Launches Textbook Rentals for the Kindle

Nothing profound. Just that here we are talking about possible
improvements in the usability of ebooks, and in the spirit of that
hilarious video I was imagining the early adopters of scrolls griping
about how they were harder to use than clay tablets, and what if we
changed the design of the handles for holding the scrolls in such a
way that maybe we could approximate the convenience of clay tablets
and......

Bruce

On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 1:14 AM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Ah thats quite a funny video.
>
> If you could clarify what you meant via the scrolls and handles
> analogy, I would be appreciative.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg Sonnenfeld
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Bruce Sherwood
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Clearly, this is very much a moving target.
>>
>> After scrolls were first introduced, was there a lot of innovation
>> getting the handles just right?
>>
>> There is an absolutely wonderful video on how to use something called
>> a "book" in a medieval monastery, produced by Norwegian TV:
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>> In college, I had a tablet I would use often for note taking and
>>> homework assignments, The few e-books I had greatly simplified the
>>> homework process, as i could cut and paste homework problems and
>>> diagrams from the book into my homework and mark them up.
>>>
>>> I look forward to the day where e-text books are fully interactive,
>>> where students could perform simulations, write codes, or write and
>>> submit there homework within fields and figures in the book ( which
>>> would ideally be done on a tablet with a stylus). I'm betting a
>>> prototype of such a book could be made using CDF. Though, I think a
>>> great deal of iteration would be needed to give the book a fluid feel
>>> that would satisfy most textbook consumers.
>>>
>>> ****************************
>>> Greg Sonnenfeld
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>> As much as I like the idea of a 3D electronic book, I don't believe it will
>>>> make an huge impact; maybe when electronic media get to the point where
>>>> writing notes and going back and forth are really as easy as with a physical
>>>> book.
>>>> One of the pressures we face as textbook authors is that unless I have a
>>>> very good website to provide additional support (ppt lectures, electronic
>>>> versions of all figures, programs, etc) I lose a lot of adopters. As Bruce
>>>> knows that's a lot of work.
>>>> The analogy between book reps and pharmaceutical reps is interesting.
>>>> However there is an order of magnitude difference in renumeration. I've
>>>> known health science faculty to give up tenure to become drug reps but I
>>>> have never seen that happen with a physics or engineering faculty member.
>>>> However, in both cases the job of the rep has changed from knowing a lot
>>>> about the product to being able to get into a faculty office and get samples
>>>> to someone who really doesn't want to talk to you.
>>>> In NM, most UNM students are self-supporting and wind up buying their own
>>>> textbooks. There has been a huge cultural shift which goes beyond the money
>>>> issue. I would never think of selling a book after taking a class but
>>>> students today have an entirely different attitude towards media. Of course
>>>> when a biology 101 textbook costs $250 (really does) the $$ matter.
>>>> What does seem to be changing is the popularity of on-line courses. At UNM
>>>> there are now 8000 student enrollments in such classes each semester. For
>>>> many years I fought against such classes as not being up to the standards of
>>>> a live class with real interaction. But with the new tools available to put
>>>> together on-line courses and to interact with students on-line, I'm
>>>> reconsidering my view. Perhaps that's where Bruce and I might find a lot of
>>>> agreement. With an on-line format, students can access a lot of 3D demos and
>>>> all kinds of other material that could not be in a physical book. I'm going
>>>> to develop such a course this fall.
>>>> Ed
>>>> __________
>>>> Ed Angel
>>>>
>>>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>>>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>>>> (ARTS Lab)
>>>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>>>
>>>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>>>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>>>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>>>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>>>> http://sfcomplex.org
>>>> On Jul 23, 2011, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'll mention that the smart physics textbook editor at Wiley, whom we
>>>> work with, a few years ago gave a very analytical talk at a physics
>>>> education conference on why textbooks MUST move to electronic form. He
>>>> gave a convincing summary of how the current scheme is dysfunctional
>>>> for everyone -- students, authors, faculty, and publishers. The only
>>>> group he could identify for whom it sort of works is university
>>>> bookstores, and even that group is going under as students buy books
>>>> over the web.
>>>>
>>>> The current high costs are due not only to production costs but also
>>>> to the counterintuitive situation that competition drives prices
>>>> higher. Publishers spend a lot of money on reps who try desperately to
>>>> get a few minutes face time to tell uninterested faculty why they
>>>> should use the latest book. The situation is similar to that of
>>>> pharmaceuticals, where company reps try to talk to doctors. The
>>>> fundamental issue is that in the case of both textbooks and drugs, the
>>>> prescriber isn't the same person as the buyer.
>>>>
>>>> Among the many dysfunctions one is almost humorous. A lot of money is
>>>> spent trucking books back and forth between publishers and university
>>>> bookstores, thanks to tax laws that require paying taxes on physical
>>>> inventory.
>>>>
>>>> An interesting aspect of textbook prices is that it is the parents who
>>>> pay the (high) price to buy the textbook, but it is the student who
>>>> gets the (significant) money from selling the used book. This exchange
>>>> presumably contributes to the fact that very few students now keep
>>>> their college textbooks.
>>>>
>>>> One possible change that interests our editor and us is that one can
>>>> imagine making an electronic textbook be highly interactive, not just
>>>> a replacement for paper, in which case an ebook could look much more
>>>> attractive. This possible context is one of the motivations for the
>>>> work I'm doing with David Scherer to make it easy to write 3D
>>>> animations that run in a browser. We're making good progress on this.
>>>>
>>>> Bruce
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I suspect it's a rather hopeless venture, at least for technical books.
>>>>
>>>> I just spent a couple of days with my editors at Addison-Wesley. Since I
>>>>
>>>> have about 250 adoptions of my textbook in the US, both I and AW are very
>>>>
>>>> interested in all these issues and have been following the various attempts
>>>>
>>>> publishers are using to try to make money using the internet. For example,
>>>>
>>>> AW created CourseSmart where students get access to the book on the internet
>>>>
>>>> for the semester at about half of what the physical book would cost. That
>>>>
>>>> venture doesn't seem to be doing very well. Part of the reason is purely
>>>>
>>>> economic. If a student can resell the book to the bookstore at the end of
>>>>
>>>> the semester for 50% then why use the electronic version.
>>>>
>>>> But the most salient factor seems to be that students do not like reading
>>>>
>>>> technical books on ipads, kindles or any other device. One interesting
>>>>
>>>> option is that some publishers are offering is a combined option where you
>>>>
>>>> get both the physical book and the electronic version for a little more than
>>>>
>>>> the cost of the physical book. Students seem to like option that since they
>>>>
>>>> can have the electronic version on a portable device while in class but use
>>>>
>>>> the physical book to study with. But of course that costs even more than the
>>>>
>>>> outrageous prices students have to pay for just the physical book.
>>>>
>>>> All in all, the publishers have not a clue as to how to get out of the death
>>>>
>>>> spiral they're in. Once the used book sellers got organized, the publishers
>>>>
>>>> responded by hounding authors to do new editions every couple of years, an
>>>>
>>>> act that drove the price of textbooks through the roof since most of the
>>>>
>>>> cost is in the production of the book not in the marginal cost of printing
>>>>
>>>> more copies. It's gotten to the point where at a place like UNM where
>>>>
>>>> students really struggle financially, the cost of textbooks is edging to
>>>>
>>>> towards the cost of tuition. Many of us authors have seen our royalties stay
>>>>
>>>> the same as the cost of books rises while the numbers sold go down but we
>>>>
>>>> don't feel very good about the situation.
>>>>
>>>> Ed
>>>>
>>>> __________
>>>>
>>>> Ed Angel
>>>>
>>>> Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Complex
>>>>
>>>> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
>>>>
>>>> (ARTS Lab)
>>>>
>>>> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>>>>
>>>> 1017 Sierra Pinon
>>>>
>>>> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>>>>
>>>> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
>>>>
>>>> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>>>>
>>>> http://artslab.unm.edu
>>>>
>>>> http://sfcomplex.org
>>>>
>>>> On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Interesting: digital rental of text books at amazon:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=16101
>>>>
>>>> Others have done this sort of thing but this is pretty big-time. And I
>>>>
>>>> notice that this is not only for the kindle device, but also for your
>>>>
>>>> computer, phone, ipad via their kindle apps, which now allow color, even
>>>>
>>>> though the kindle itself is black/white only.
>>>>
>>>> -- Owen
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>>
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>>
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>>
>>>
>>> ============================================================
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>