1. eBooks: Benefits, Challenges,
and the Future
Stephen Abram, MLS
Vice President
Gale Cengage Learning
SEFLIN– Sept. 21, 2012

2. Is this graphic correct? What’s wrong?

10. Is the book experience in your head?

11. Frankenbooks? Emotion? Morality?

14. The Physical Act of Reading

15. Think harder about book components!

18. Whose needs are met by e-books and e-libraries?

20. Deer in headlamps slide here.

21. Welcome
Questions for Today:
1. What is REALLY happening with eBooks?
2. Where is all this change taking us?
3. Do people still value the book?
4. What’s next?
5. What is the role for librarians in our info-
future?

22. There is no guarantee that the e-
book scenario will play out to
include libraries

23. What is an EXPERIENCE?
What is a library experience?
What differentiates a library experience from a transaction?
What differentiates college libraries from Google/Bing?

24. The Evolution
of Answers

25. Why do people ask questions?
Is your library experience conceptually organized around answers and programs?
Or collections, technology and buildings?

26. Why do people ask questions?
 Who, What, When, Where
 How & Why
 Data – Information – Knowledge - Behavior
 To Learn or to Know
 To Acquire Information, Clarify, Tune
 To Decide, to Solve, to Choose, to Delay
 To Interview, Delve, Interact, Progress
 To Entertain or Socialize
 To Reduce Fear
 To Help, Aid, Cure, Be a Friend
 To Win A Bet

27. READING EXERCISE
Why do people read?

28. Why do people read?
1. To learn
2. To engage in hearing other’s opinions (to agree or disagree or understand)
3. To develop more knowledge about myself and develop as a whole person
4. To be entertained and laugh, to engage and interact
5. To address boredom and the inexorable progress of time
6. To research and keep up-to-date
7. To participate well in civil society (everything from news to voting)
8. To be informed (and maybe smarter)
9. To understand others (individually and culturally)
10. To escape our day-to-day lives
11. To stimulate the imagination and be inspired or spiritual
12. To write and communicate better through reading others
13. To teach
14. To have something to talk about
15. To connect with like-minded people

30. Describe
Social
Reading

31. The Books
Mosaic

32. Beyond Text
• Challenging the concept of the ‘book’
• Text
• Links and extension experiences
• Graphics & Charts
• Working Formulae
• Interactive Pictures
• Interactive Maps
• Video
• Audio
• Music – book scores
• Gamification
• Deep Data Mining
• Assessments
• Etc. etc.

33. Fiction

34. Non-Fiction

35. Encyclopedia

36. Reference

37. Directories

38. Dictionaries

39. Textbooks

40. Scholarly

41. Kiddy Lit

42. E-Learning

44. Mobility

53. Pottermore

55. Skirmishes
 Harper Collins 26 times (1)
 Hachette 226% (1)
 Penguin pilots
 CULC Pilot
 OverDrive aggregation
 DOJ lawsuit (3)
 Kindle Library e-books
 Douglas County PL, CALIFA, DPLA
 Advertising in eBooks
 Malicious Links
 Vanity Press vs. self publishing

58. Skirmishes but Big Ones
 App Store Rules
 Porn – e.g. Sports Illustrated
 No Criticism rule
 Politicians’ apps
 Satire
 Pulitzer Prize winner
 Books as an app require approval
 Potential restraint of trade
 Who chooses?
 Censorship . . .?
 Walled gardens

59. What does all this mean?
 The Article level universe
 The Chapter and Paragraph Universe
 Integrated with Visuals – graphics and charts
 Integrated with ‘video’
 Integrated with Sound and Speech
 Integrated with social web
 Integrated with interaction and not just
interactivity
 How would you enhance a book?

60. Device Issues

61. Kobo, Nook, Amazon Kindle & Fire, Apple iPad, Sony Reader, etc. . . .

66. Mobility

67. Broadband
 You must clearly understand the latest US FCC
Whitespace Broadband Decision – THIS IS
TRANSFORMATIONAL and going global
 Local wired, mobile access ‘everywhere’ to the
home and workplace
 Geo-awareness: GIS, GPS, GEO-IP, etc.
 Wireless as a business strategy (Starbucks)
 Mobile dominates
 Largest generation

70. The Future Discovered
• Stem Cells
• fMRI and The Brain
• Cloning
• Trucking and GPS
• Wind and other energy
• Nanotechnology
• Robotics
• Massive Book Digitization
• Music
• Translation
• Streaming Media
• Seed Bank

71. Interdisciplinary
Cross-disciplinary
Integrated

72. GAMIFICATION

76. Grocery Stores

77. Grocery Stores

78. Grocery Stores

79. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

80. Cookbooks, Chefs . . .

81. Meals

82. You have the tools.

83. Stop Making it So Hard!

84. Books
• Reception of Reading and Experience
• Fiction – paper, e-paper
• Non-Fiction
• Articles - disaggregation
• Media – physical vs. streaming
• Learning Objects
• Stories vs. Pedagogy

85. Technology Context
• Cloud (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
• Laptops and Tablets
• Mobility / Smartphones
• Bandwidth (Wired, WiFi, Whitespace)
• Learning Management Systems
• Streaming video and audio vs. download
• HTML5 and Apps – the battle
• Advertising auction models and ‘product’
• New(ish) Players (Amazon, Apple, G, B&N, Uni’s,
states/provinces/nations)

86. The Textbook Basics
• Containers for Pedagogy
• Created by Teams (e.g. 40,000 authors a year for
Cengage alone) (yes that’s a lot of lawyers)
• Copyright and complicated layering of millions of
rights (creators - pictures, graphics, video, tests,
text, documents, etc.)
• Serious Lawsuits: Feist, Texaco, LSUC, Tasini,
NatGeo, Authors Guild, jStor, GBS, etc.
• Complex extension opportunities (links to
articles, databases, library assistance, etc.)

87. Textbook Challenges
• Format Agnosticism
• Browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari
• Devices: Macintosh, PC Desktops & Laptops
• Mobile: Laptops, Tablets (iPad, Fire, etc.)
• Mobile: Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, Android,
Windows, etc.)
• Container: PDF, ePub, .mobi, Kindle, etc.
• Learning Management System: Blackboard / WebCT,
D2L, Moodle, Sakai, etc.
• Purchasing (Amazon, B&N, Chegg, CengageBrain, Apple
Store, University Textbook Store, etc.)

88. Should we tie users, students or
professors to a specific and
proprietary device or operating
system?

89. What is the priority?
Price, Cost, Value, ROI
Managing or Mandating the Adoption Curve
Learning and Progress
Societal Impact = 17%, 40%, 70%?

90. Death of the Traditional Textbook?
• Shallow pool innovation – e-copies
• Open Access Textbooks?
• Coursepacks and e-coursepacks?
• Apple?
• Google?
• Etc.

91. What is Changing?
1. Componentization of pedagogy
2. Enhanced textbooks (tests, tracking, video,
etc.)
3. Advanced e-learning
4. Ability to archive
5. The purchaser matrix (individual student,
class, institutions, state/province/country)
6. Textbook boundaries (library links first…)

92. Pricing Models
• Buy the print copy
• Buy the exact electronic copy of the print
• Buy both (bundling)
• Rent the print or e-copy for a specified period
• Create custom coursepacks in print or e-copy
• Buy at the course level included in fee
• Buy at the institution / enterprise level
• Buy at the state/province level
• Espresso Book Machines
• Pay-per-use, micro-payments, ‘Square’ and phones

93. This era will see a Fundamental
Reimagining the Textbook alone
For the present there will be those
who resist and the resisters will be
the majority.

96. Thanks
Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
VP strategic partnerships and markets
Cengage Learning (Gale)
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@cengage.com
Stephen.abram@gmail.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
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