Textbooks

A textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are
produced according to the demand of educational institutions.

History
Texts specifically designated for educational purposes were written in ancient Greece. The
modern textbook has its roots in the standardization made possible by the printing press.
Early textbooks were used by tutors and teachers, who used the books as instructional aids
(e.g., alphabet books), as well as individuals who taught themselves. Compulsory education
and the subsequent growth of schooling in Europe led to the printing of many standardized
texts for children. Textbooks have become the primary teaching instrument for most children
since the 19th century.

Textbooks on the Net in God’s Own Country

Kerala has led India in many areas of social progress. Now the state is taking a lead in putting
school textbooks on the Net, which could be a precursor to much greater things, says
Frederick Noronha.

“Something revolutionary is happening in Kerala’s education sector,” senior journalist K G

Kumar and now a champion of the Free Software movement in India, said recently. He was
referring to the idea of sharing school texts via the Net.

Believe it or not, this is actually happening. It’s visible in India already. One of the first states
to do this was Kerala. Its textbooks, available in portable document format (PDF), are already
downloadable. Go to either www.keralaeducation.org or www.education.kerala.gov.in and
you’ll find the textbooks just a download away.

What makes this idea particularly interesting is the potential it has to generate new wealth
simply by sharing. In this case, sharing of textbooks.

It’s time India too looked to the potential of IT and digital technology beyond just the
traditional technological sense, and in a more ‘social’ manner. Already, institutions like the
United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, international development organisations,
NGOs, academics, Net-based volunteers and others are looking at how information and
communication technology (ICTs) can help battle poverty and development.

Solutions such as these, which enrich the recipient without impoverishing the giver, have a
big role to play.

In Kerala, from the coming academic year, all textbooks for Std X students will be available
on the Internet. Some books in the Malayalam or English medium are already available
online. More languages are expected to come online soon. Students and teachers can
download the printer-friendly PDF-formatted textbooks free of cost, provided they are used
only for educational purposes.

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Can we expect more Indian education boards and universities to put up their resources in the
public domain via the Net? One of the pioneers in the field, that could inspire others here, has
been the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s OpenCourseWare.

OpenCourseWare is a free and open publication of the prestigious MIT’s course materials,
available via both the Web and Dspace. The latter is a software that makes OpenCourseWare
possible. Dspace is a long-term ‘digi library’ or a super archive of virtually the entire
intellectual and research output of MIT scholars and researchers, estimated to be around
10,000 papers, data files, images, collections of field notes, and audio and video clips each
year.

The idea that knowledge and technology needs to be shared freely—as pushed earlier by
groups like the Free Software Movement, active since the early eighties—is spreading to
other fields too. Today, there is OpenLaw, Open Source Biology, and even Open Source
Mining, a Free Encyclopedia, and Open Music. Most of these are still restricted to beyond
Indian shores, and there is lot for all to gain from implementing similar knowledge-sharing
ideas here too.

Open Law has as its basic idea the “crafting of legal argument in an open forum” and the
harnessing of “distributed resources of the Internet community.”

Under traditional legal practice, legal arguments are crafted in closed rooms by lawyers, and
are kept secret until in front of the court, where the opponent unprepared for a particular line
of argument may fail to make a convincing counter-argument. Open Law, on the other hand,
constructs legal arguments “out in the open” and thus removes the surprise element from its
arguments. This turns the traditionally adversarial and secretive world of the legal system on
its head.

Open Source Biology raises the question of whether “a band of biologists who share data
freely out-innovate corporate researchers.” Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.net) was
founded in 1971 by Professor Michael Hart of Illinois, USA to create a library of books in the
public domain. Many more books from India need to find their place among such a
collection, though a small trickle has already started.

Then, there are free dictionaries and encyclopaedias—like the Nupedia, Wikipedia and The
Open Dictionary. The Open music movement has seen near-perfect copying software and
compression technologies (MP3, OGG) couple with peer-to-peer technologies like Napster,
Kazaa and Gnutella. We in India obviously have a lot to be done. But Kerala has shown the
way.

Paradigms of Textbooks

Product Development

Over the last 100 years publishers have developed elaborate processes to create books that are
99.9% accurate and complete upon publication. Their expertise in this area runs deep and the
culture reinforces the need to get products as close to perfect as possible.

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Product Lifecycle

Due to the adoption cycle textbook publishers are used to finishing a product and then not
touching it for 5-7 years. Their editorial and sales departments operate in a boom and bust
cycle that waxes and wanes with the overlapping state schedules of adoption. At the end of
the lifecycle the product is usually ditched so that a new copyright can be created.

Sales Models

An adoption is typically a hunting license with a zero sum outcome. 2-5 publishers are
approved and they then compete for a fixed block of funds – that are earmarked specifically
to print materials. As a result once the adoption is won the economics of marginal cost take
over and the companies find themselves in a race to break even. Inducements are layered on
to the print materials as “free with order” and include valuable products like software and
expensive services like professional development and product training. People value what
they pay for and software in this context is seen as a low value freebie. Sampling is also an
expensive proposition – sending in a complete set of materials for a full program can involve
a specially constructed box that weighs up to 50 lbs.

Support

Once the books are printed and sold support is seen largely as a problem for the warehouse.
Editorial, Sales, and Marketing focus on the next new thing.

Marketing

Textbooks are a classic long tail business and in the publishers are experts at managing and
milking what they call their back list (typicall products with a copyright more than 2 years
old). The large publishers all have SKUs than run into 5 figures and the most profitable part
of their business are the older products. As a result the marketing tends to be less focused and
more generic or highly targeted at new products. They also do a pretty good job of
recognizing that a wide range of materials work in the classroom including print and
technology.

Personality

Textbook Publishers are in the business because they care deeply about books. They have a
passion for the subjects they publish for (reading, math, etc.) and they work dilligently to
introduce products that support classroom teachers. Their employees (across the business) are
mostly comprised of people who are not comfortable with technology - in fact many are
downright threatened by it.