Apple's 'Education Announcement' Scheduled for January 19 in New York City

[Squeak825]

Printing and distribution costs on hard copy books far exceeds 50% of the current cost. Publishers would be making far more money paying Apple the 30%.

That is absolutely false. PB&D (Printing, Binding & Distribution) for textbooks are usually in the 10-15% range of retail cost.

The vast majority of the costs for books is in the editorial costs, permissions for text and photos, overhead, and profit.

At least in the K-12 space, a 30% cut to Apple will be non-tolerable. Just doesn't work for the current business model and market.

 

[ericrwalker]

Those kinds of teachers don't teach well and should be fired. Most teachers did that in my school.

Get fired? That's not going to happen in NY. They will be sent to some room and get full pay.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Those kinds of teachers don't teach well and should be fired. Most teachers did that in my school.

That's so unfortunate. At least they taught you how to learn from a book!

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That is absolutely false. PB&D (Printing, Binding & Distribution) for textbooks are usually in the 10-15% range of retail cost.

The vast majority of the costs for books is in the editorial costs, permissions for text and photos, overhead, and profit.

Author, press and bookstore all make the big bucks. Their profit margin is huge!

 

[JHankwitz]

I don't understand why this is taking place in NY

All of the major book publishers are located in New Your.

 

[soco]

Apple comes before Atari in an alphabetical list.

Sure does.

...

#awkward

 

[JHankwitz]

It's about time someone like Apple is putting these textbook publishing mafia out of business.

Publishers and greedy professors update 2% of their text and force students and parents to buy "updated" books at hundreds of dollar each textbook. What scums

Apple is a distributor, not a publisher.

 

[Bubba Satori]

You mean the kids carrying 30lb backpacks home from middle school, often using one should strap?

It's good exercise.

 

[rkw0211]

Anyone who has to carry around textbooks that are hardly ever used should be excited for this one.

 

[Peace]

You mean the kids carrying 30lb backpacks home from middle school, often using one should strap?

It's good exercise.

When I went to school I walked 3 miles barefoot uphill both ways.

Kids nowadays. Buncha wimps !!

 

[Bubba Satori]

Please have law school textbooks on the iPad. I would immediately sell all my books, by an iPad 3 and buy all my books on that.

You don't get it, do you?
That will be the last time you will be able to sell your books.
After that, you lose the ability to recoup some of the cost
of textbooks by selling them. No wonder publishers are willing to
give Apple a 30% kickback for eliminating used book sales.

Magic.

 

[BaldiMac]

That is absolutely false. PB&D (Printing, Binding & Distribution) for textbooks are usually in the 10-15% range of retail cost.

The vast majority of the costs for books is in the editorial costs, permissions for text and photos, overhead, and profit.

At least in the K-12 space, a 30% cut to Apple will be non-tolerable. Just doesn't work for the current business model and market.

How much do other retailers get?

 

[marcusj0015]

And I start college this fall

if this is legit, I'll most likely get an iPad. not only would it be awesome for writing, but also great for school

 

[davie18]

I have a hard time seeing the NY skyline without thinking of 9/11. Maybe not the best marketing move by Apple.

What an utterly pathetic comment.

 

[billnye97]

Well I'm currently taking college courses and I have tried the three big eTextbook apps out there today (Kno, Inkling, and Coursesmart). Kno and Coursesmart basically have scanned textbooks with some different varying search and highlighting capablities. I generally save enough getting them online that negates any benefit of selling the book back at the end of the year. Inkling, on the other hand, re-engineers the textbook and has easy search mechanisms, can take a picture and quiz you over it, and has video embedded. The only problem is there are only about 100 titles. I've finally had a class where the book was available on Inkling.

If Apple has anything to do with this it would be phenomenal. I think Inkling more fits in with the Apple model of making a beautiful product. I'm quite excited for January 19th.

 

[vkramer]

If Tim Cook presents at this event, its gonna be the first actualy Apple Event hosted by Tim since Steve's death.

Time to bring your A game, Mr. Cook

 

[Frosties]

Digital textbooks become interesting first if there is no DRM for resale, the inflated cartel prices on digital books ends and you can read the textbooks not JUST on iOS but anywhere. This is still not true so paper is better for the student.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Oh yeah, two (depending on price of iPad) texts books for free

I've seen textbooks as cheap as $20 (for a short, paperback workbook,) and as expensive as $500 (for medical books,) but for the most part they're between $100 and $200. So it seems to me even a $500 iPad aught to get a student 3 textbooks.

Everyone wins:
Apple - Sure, they're dominating the tablet market right now, but the number of people who own tablets is tiny. With a deal like this, I'd say iPad adoption in the classroom would go from 2% of students have them to 30+% of students have them.
Publishers - Students buy eTextooks instead of used textbooks. This increases revenue because 1, they no longer lose revenue to people buying used instead of new, and 2, they no longer have to print textbooks.
Students - iPad weighs less and takes up less space. Actual iBooks are vastly better than PDFs, websites, or Kindle Books, because they're stored on the device (thus load faster,) and are formatted as they should be (figures don't end up on the wrong pages and stuff.)
Developers - Huge adoption of iPads means they have a lot more incentive to make apps.

 

[ericinboston]

I think this all but confirms that they are going to do something along the lines of textbooks for the iPad

Probably, but there's a difference between textbooks and your typical novel. Novels you just read and put away. Textbooks you re-read sections, mark up the pages for questions or clarification or highlights, fix typos, add notes from the professor, reference an example on page 19 for the question/quiz on page 26, etc. Attempting to do this in the digital world has never been successful and likely will take decades more to perfect.

There are a lot of times that I simply have to use paper and pen to get something done. Yes, I can add an annotation to a digital document but it's just not the same.

My guess is textbooks like English books or Greek Mythology might be ok...but math, science, computer, biology, etc. type textbooks will be miserable to use. Yes, I'm sure they will have wonderful animations or little video clips to show you how something works...but it's all about the note-taking needs to be perfected.

If you have ever had those types of scientific classes, your textbooks are all marked up. Not so much on the Emily Dickinson collection.

 

[LWX]

This has come 3-4 years too late for me

Fantastic news though - I had to make do with PDFs on my iPhone/laptop at university, and I still ended up buying a lot of books that I don't even bother having with me now having moved away from my parents, I just hate paper and books.

 

[applesith]

Those kinds of teachers don't teach well and should be fired. Most teachers did that in my school.

Unions protect the incompetent teachers.

 

[badmac78]

has to be killer ...

Unless Apple has bought Inkling (http://www.inkling.com/) or plans to out-execute what they are already doing on the iPad, I'm not sure it's going to work. They not only have to make the textbooks available on the iPad, Apple has to give writers / publishers a good set of tools to use to create the books. If it's just ePub and nothing more, it may fall flat.

 

[verniesgarden]

iPad textbooks will be great if they're significantly cheaper than their physical counterparts. Used textbooks are one of the easiest things to sell in university/college and dramatically reduce the final cost. However the convenience and extra features may be more valuable to some than resale value.



Really? The NYC skyline is the most iconic skyline in the world and is used in everything from snow globes to big budget Hollywood films. 9/11 was tragic but it's is not going to stop anyone from using the amazing NYC skyline. Also it looks like Apple is portraying midtown Manhattan and not lower Manhattan which means you have no point.

Being that skylines are silhouettes of the buildings...

In all honesty, after the WTC was destroyed, I really doubt NYC "skyline" is the most recognizable anymore. Believe it or not, but Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago skylines are a lot more recognizable than NYC, there are not the unique structures like the space needle or the arch, and chicago is the skyline you see in movies.

 

[ericinboston]

Many teachers just ask their students to open their textbooks and read and do the exercises at the end of the lesson.

That is not a true statement. If "many" of your teachers did this, they will have been fired by the time you went to the next grade.

I agree that SOME teachers in SOME SUBJECTS will concentrate a lot on reading a textbook (English, Psychology, Ethics, etc)...but definitely none of the Sciences and likely very few of the History topics.

There is a lot of raw knowledge in most textbooks, but the teacher helps you understand the concepts more fully, helps draw comparisons in fact as well as his/her opinion, and teaches what textbooks may overlook/skip. Textbooks really are the tool to help the teacher be organized about the topic(s) for the year/course. I have a few friends that are teachers (I work in high tech) and they use the textbooks very much as a guide and timeline for learning concepts (for example it should take a 3rd grade class 4 hours of time to understand the concept of multiplication).

Seriously, if teachers acted the way you are describing, I can guarantee you they are fired unless they get much more interactive.

 

[billnye97]

Probably, but there's a difference between textbooks and your typical novel. Novels you just read and put away. Textbooks you re-read sections, mark up the pages for questions or clarification or highlights, fix typos, add notes from the professor, reference an example on page 19 for the question/quiz on page 26, etc. Attempting to do this in the digital world has never been successful and likely will take decades more to perfect.

There are a lot of times that I simply have to use paper and pen to get something done. Yes, I can add an annotation to a digital document but it's just not the same.

My guess is textbooks like English books or Greek Mythology might be ok...but math, science, computer, biology, etc. type textbooks will be miserable to use. Yes, I'm sure they will have wonderful animations or little video clips to show you how something works...but it's all about the note-taking needs to be perfected.

If you have ever had those types of scientific classes, your textbooks are all marked up. Not so much on the Emily Dickinson collection.

I'm about to enter Medical School in the fall and I've never marked up my textbooks with notes. If I take notes then I take notes in a notebook. I've used digital textbooks for every class that they were available for and I love them. So much easier to carry around. Now if they had lab manuals available that would be awesome....

 

[nutmac]

My wish list:

• Textbook from all the major textbook publishers
• Textbook rental pricing available for all textbooks, with pricing model similar to Kindle Textbook Rental (but standardized across all, such as 80% off for 1-month, 60% off for 3-month, 40% off for 6-month on all textbooks)
• iBooks app for Mac
• Group and public notes
• Note and highlight toolbar icons on the chrome for easier access
• True page number for search and footnotes
• My personal pet peeve: swap Store and Edit buttons on iPhone client's Library screen (just like iPad's)