I have been getting this question quiet often. A few years ago, I put out a ‘State of the Industry’ report and it detailed my finds and belief on e-Pubs. First, let me say there is a lot of people doing work on trying to make e-Pubs best fit into the higher education sector.
Let’s get caught up
Here’s a few things to get you up to speed:
- Most publishers are creating e-pubs.
- In order to create accessibility, the top 5 are all using Tech4All to help come up with a plan of action
- Benetech is offering e-pub certification. After review they will digitally stamp that epub as being reviewed.
- VitalSource and other major epub distributors are now labeling those items who have accessibility features built in
If you take nothing from this post, take away that there are a lot of great people, like Rachel Comerford from Macmillan, doing everything they can to promote accessibility.
At the moment there are only a few resources you need to know:
- The only application so far we’ve found to really edit ePub is Sigil. While people are afraid of ePubs because its based on HTML, you don’t need to know coding to edit an ePub. In fact, I know some schools who’s workflow is to convert a document to word and then save as an epub through word.
- There are a few readers that students can use. At the moment the spotlight is on Thorreum reader, which is one of the best e-readers I’ve tested for users who need a screen reader.
- Publishers, when requested an accessible copy have pointed universities to existing e-pub sites. These sites have offered an array of accessibility features and flaws. Most of these will grant you access to review the book in the e-reader before giving it to the student.
With that in mind, there are still many Universities I speak with that tell me, they have not had a single epub request.
Examining in the numbers
It would seem that most sites would agree that epubs make up about 20% of the market share[1]. In addition some site state that “Digital audiobooks continues the long-standing trend of seeing continuous growth every month since 2012. Downloaded Audio revenues saw a 14.3% increase as compared to October of last year, reaching $56.9 million in revenue. On a year-to-date basis, Downloaded Audio was up 17.3% as compared to the same period in 2019, with a total of $553.6 million for the year so far.[2]”
Who are buying those books may surprise you however. According to CNBC, “Sixty-three percent of physical book sales in the U.K. are to people under the age of 44, while 52% of e-book sales are to those over 45, according to Nielsen.
It’s a similar picture in the U.S., where 75% of people aged 18 to 29 claimed to have read a physical book in 2017, higher than the average of 67%, according to Pew Research.[3]”
The cost of e-pubs may also surprise you. In my report a few years ago, I concluded the price of digital textbooks were almost twice as much as buying an in-print one. There were many factors that went into this, including the cost of bundled items online, the ability to buy used in-print books, and the benefit of reselling your in-print book. At that time, the price of an e-book was overall less than the price of the same textbook new. Today, that is not the same story. The price of an ebook is now about the same (with a difference of a dollar or two) or sometimes even more expensive then the in-print book.
In 2012 the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Apple and the five biggest publishing companies. “The Department of Justice accused Apple and the publishers of colluding to fix ebook prices against Amazon, and although the DOJ won its case in court, the pricing model that Apple and the publishers created together would continue to dominate the industry, creating unintended ripple effect.[4]”
When compared to Digital Textbooks, “Digital textbooks segment led the market in 2018 with a market share of over 61%, followed by digital assessment books, and others.[5]” We are seeing online textbook grow a steep rate, bundled with online learning management systems, which include HW assignments, learning tools, and exams/quizzes. With many publishers moving towards a ‘Digital first’ strategy, we will only see more and more of these items.
My recommendations for you and factors you need to consider
I’ve heard a lot of students say they only wanted the word file. This is mostly due to the fact it is easier to navigate and allows them the most options for taking notes on that document or easily moving that content to another document with their notes.
At this point, I would recommend everyone learning the bare basics of ePubs.
For students who’s studying in social sciences, like political science, philosophy, social work, whose course work is mostly online readings from journals, etc, or traditional books, it is likely you can continue to provide the same resources at the moment. It is likely eventually you will run into an ePub however.
For those whose students are in hard science that typically rely on textbooks, you probably already have encountered ePubs, and should now be investing in learning how to create and edit ePubs.
At this point, regardless of which side of the coin you are on, here are things I recommend you begin to learn and understand:
- What are ePubs, and how to open them
- What readers are available to you and your students (like Theorem)
- What features are available in the various tools and how they interact with different Assistive technology
- How to edit an ePub (and what tools like Sigil you’ll need)
- Basic HTML knowledge (which you can learn in an hour on youtube)
Before you begin
Most people who are afraid of ePub have expressed concerns over learning HTML. You do not need to be a website designer, only understand basic HTML code (like headings, tables, lists, etc). You can learn this in under an hour. Secondly, there are software that allows you to edit ePubs without coding knowledge.
The most important things right now, is understanding how it functions in the greater ecosystem with the questions described above.
[1] https://about.ebooks.com/ebook-industry-news-feed/
[2] https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/ebook-sales-in-the-us-were-up-20-4-in-october
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell-e-books-and-heres-why.html
[4] https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/23/20991659/ebook-amazon-kindle-ereader-department-of-justice-publishing-lawsuit-apple-ipad
[5] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005198/en/Digital-Education-Publishing-Market-in-the-US-2019-2023-12-CAGR-Projection-Over-the-Next-Five-Years-Technavio