Digital media in educational publishing - what I've seen happening over the past three years

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Most of my digital media experience in the educational publishing industry has been limited to CDs - and these have always been supplementary products rather than standalone-saleable items.

Although some of these CDs have been for student use, taking the form of podcasts that give practical examples to the theory the textbook contains, the majority of the CDs created have been solely for the instructor's use.

A typical instructor's CD would contain PowerPoint slides (for lectures and tutorials), an Instructor's manual (a guide on material to cover in lectures and tutorials), a Solutions manual (answers to all the questions in the textbook), ExamView testbank files (a database of hundreds of different types of questions formulated from the textbook that the instructor can use for assessment purposes), student quizzes (for homework and tests) and all the low res images contained in the textbook (for instructors to use however they wish).

Over the past year, we've abandoned the use of CDs - all content that was originally on CD is now uploaded onto our (now very stable) website instead. As each book has an automatic companion website dedicated to it, the process is a simple matter of uploading supplementary content for the textbook on to the companion website shell, then going live.

Some of our blockbuster books have more supplementary features and require something snazzier than the bog-standard companion site. In these cases our multimedia team builds individual websites from the ground up. Everything is password protected and bound up with the sale of the textbook, or adoption by a tertiary educator, so this link to MKGT will only provide you with limited access.

As well as acting as a central depository for instructors (and sales reps) the use of the internet as a platform for providing additional product has enabled the growth of numerous additional supplementary products for students. These include material such as: flashcards, crossword puzzles, quizzes (multiple choice, true/false, short answer, fill in the blank, etc), glossaries (with audio), weblinks, internet exercises and so on. In fact, one of my books, Principles of Macroeconomics in New Zealand 2e, has three additional chapters, only available online.

Currently, our US colleagues are promoting iChapters for products with electronic formats, which includes ebooks, individual chapters, audio and video. We'll be moving in to this iChapter market next year.

Parallel importation of books - what's the issue? Useful links to keep you informed

On 14 July 2009, the Productivity Commission released their final report on Australia's book parallel importation restrictions (PIRs). They disagreed with the numerous submissions on keeping PIRs lodged by Australian writers, illustrators and publishing houses, and instead recommended that the government repeal PIRs for books. The report has created an uproar in the industry and there are many who see the findings as a potential death knell for Australian books and writing.

The educational publisher I work for is diametrically opposed to the recent recommendations, a view shared by most members of the Australian education publishing industry. Many educational publishers believe that the Productivity Commission doesn't understand the textbook market and that repealing PIRs will lead to a sharp decline in the quality and availability of Australian-produced content.

If you are new to this industry issue, a concise and informative piece of writing on the debate, and an outline of the key stakeholders involved (consumers, authors, publishers and retailers), is Sally Murphy's A Layman's Guide to the Cheaper Books Debate.

For those who want a comprehensive look at the controversy, Tim Coronel, the publisher of WBN (Weekly Book Newsletter), provides regularly updated links.

And, just to be balanced, here is what the Coalition for Cheaper Books has to say.