Educators forum?

FYI, the eDGe isn't just great for college students. It's also perfect for K-12 kids. My oldest carts these heavy*** books between school and home because she thinks rolling backpacks are for little kids (she's a tween). Given the homework she has to complete every night, the fact that her teachers all post their assignments online, and that most of her reading materials for humanities and literature are available free on Gutenberg or other such sites, the eDGe would be a fantastic tool for her and kids like her.

Is enTourage interested in the K-12 market? If teachers/schools signed on, I'd buy one of these for EACH of my kids in a heartbeat. And schools could buy the ebooks in bulk. There's gotta be a discount for saving a few trees.

Originally Posted by NiaTrue

Is enTourage interested in the K-12 market? If teachers/schools signed on, I'd buy one of these for EACH of my kids in a heartbeat. And schools could buy the ebooks in bulk. There's gotta be a discount for saving a few trees.

That's been one of my greatest frustrations so far is that there's so few e-versions of the textbooks in my subject area for my use, let alone my students'. But hopefully the glut of competitors coming to market will force the publishers hands somewhat.

Hmmm...hope so. The ROI on the cost of creating content goes up the more you repackage it. Once you've hired writers, designers, marketers, etc., it's silly not to dump that content into as many vehicles as are road-worthy. And there are no better users/product ambassadors than kids--except maybe satisfied moms and dads.

The lack of economics text is disappointing. For me, the real benefit of the eDGe comes from not having to print out journal articles on reams and reams of paper; I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I won't be able to purchase any texts that I use in my program for the eDGe. At most, there's only a few thousand students in the world who use the PhD-level economics texts in any given academic year, so I'm not holding my breath for any of the publishers to come out with electronic versions of them, particularly since PDFs are widely available for free all over the internet. I would imagine that publishers would expect to sell less than a hundred copies per year of electronic texts, which probably doesn't cover the conversion costs. But some of the scanned PDFs really aren't good enough to use a primary source, so I'll have to buy hardcopies (I own many of them already).

But it's not just the PhD-level economics texts that seem to be lacking... many popular undergrad economics texts (i.e., ones that I would consider using for when I start teaching next summer) don't seem to be available either (and the ones that are cost considerably more than a "like-new" used copy). I imagine that it's pretty laborious to convert to EPUB or whatever since every equation needs to carefully checked and likely rewritten. But until the publishers price etexts at or near the prevailing price of like-new used books, I'm not sure that they'll be widely adopted.

One would think that publishers would be more enthusiastic about etextbooks, as they can exercise FAR more control over the secondary market. But so far, they are pricing them at or even above the list price for a new hardcopy, which very few students actually pay.

Originally Posted by walt526

I imagine that it's pretty laborious to convert to EPUB or whatever since every equation needs to carefully checked and likely rewritten. But until the publishers price etexts at or near the prevailing price of like-new used books, I'm not sure that they'll be widely adopted.

Actually, thanks to Quark and InDesign, you can convert content from print to web to PDF documents with the click of a mouse--assuming there was some forethought toward this end from the beginning. As borisb says, however, for previously published books, renegotiating rights and permissions can take the better part of a year for one book!

As for the cost, the most expensive part of old-school publishing used to be the paper. Now, in an increasingly paperless world, it's the cost of hiring seasoned writers and paying them enough to get interesting and accurate content, then hiring a skilled designer to make it look good in several different media, then a copy editor to polish it all. Those costs are fixed relatively, no matter what medium you choose to distribute your content.

Check out the new Education forum! If you have suggestion for more subtopics, let us know!

Originally Posted by Snow

Check out the new Education forum! If you have suggestion for more subtopics, let us know!

Thanks! I appreciate your continuing responsiveness to customers.

Originally Posted by Batman Jr.

Thanks! I appreciate your continuing responsiveness to customers.

Ditto that.