Licensing: A Better Way to "Buy" Computer Texts

What if, instead of purchasing hard copies of computer texts, school districts license the books from the publisher at a cost of $5 per user? When a new version of the software is purchased, the publisher simply replaces the obsolete material with updated digital copies of the text. Digital book licensing slashes the cost of computer books and leaves school districts with fewer obsolete books. Is it an option for your district? Included: A discussion of the advantages and risks of digital book licensing.

Licensing digital books is an idea whose time has come for schools. Publishers now are beginning to license books just as they license software, allowing school districts to post texts on servers for downloading and/or printing. For books that change frequently, such as those used in computer classes, licensing can help schools maintain up-to-date texts -- and cut purchasing costs in half.

PURCHASE OR LEASE?

How does it work? Let's say a school district buys 1,000 hard copies of a $20 text for a particular software program. Then a new version of the program comes out, which the district adopts. Suddenly, the district is stuck with 1,000 expensive -- and obsolete -- texts.

What if, instead of purchasing hard copies of the text, the school district licensed the book from its publisher at a cost of $5 per user? Digital copies of the book are posted on the district server, where staff can download as many copies as they need. Teachers post PDF copies of the book on each classroom computer for student use. When hard copies are needed, they're printed, a chapter at a time, on the school's copier -- or on the district's high-speed printer -- and distributed as handouts. If more copies are needed than are practical to print, a print-on-demand (POD) company provides a few hundred paperbacks for $5 apiece.

The total cost of each licensed book is $5 to $10 -- and when a new version of the software is purchased, the publisher simply replaces the obsolete material with updated digital copies of the text.

Not only does licensing slash the cost of computer books and leave school districts with fewer obsolete books, the easy availability of updated texts enables schools to begin using new technology as quickly as possible.

NEW TECHNOLOGY ENABLES BOOK LICENSING

The book licensing system described above wouldn't have been possible as recently as three years ago. Three new technologies, however, now have combined to enable convenient, inexpensive licensing. Those technologies are Adobe PDF, the Web, and print on demand.

Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format), a popular format for downloadable documents, is being used for an increasing number of books. PDF allows anyone equipped with the free, downloadable Acrobat Reader to read -- and print -- books from any personal computer.

The World Wide Web provides an excellent way to distribute PDF books. Instead of shipping and warehousing pallet loads of paperbacks, schools now can allow staff and students to download digital copies directly from publishers' Web sites.

If school copiers can't print enough hard copies of the book, print-on-demand (POD) companies can take up the slack. New, high-tech POD machines can print 100 books for almost the same per-book cost as a 5,000-book run printed by traditional presses. A school can send a digital book to a POD publisher, order a few hundred paperback copies, and pay less per book than if it had ordered thousands of conventional paperbacks.

A SHIFT IN THE TEXTBOOK BUSINESS

Why are publishers willing to license digital copies at less than half the cost of a paperback? A better question might be, "Why aren't more publishers doing it?"

Textbook licensing eliminates a lot of up-front costs and middleman fees for publishers. Publishers don't have to pay to print, warehouse, or ship bound books. In addition, licensed books don't require a wholesaler for distribution. When a school library orders a book from a wholesaler, the publisher only gets about half of what the library pays for the book. The wholesaler gets the rest. By eliminating the middleman, a publisher often can make more profit from a $5 user license than from a $20 paperback sale.

Licensing does carry risks for publishers, of course. There are no guarantees that digital books licensed to a school district won't be pirated, just as software programs are. Visibooks, a startup computer book publisher that licenses and sells digital books, already has seen several of its titles pop up on the Gnutella file-sharing network, as well as on CDs sold on eBay. Larger publishers, just like large record companies, often are reluctant to sell digital content that might be "Napsterized."

Some publishers, however, believe that the benefits of digital distribution outweigh the risks. Ernie Winters, Visibooks' production manager, thinks that by increasing customer awareness of books, file sharing and pirating actually generate more sales than they cost. "And," he says, "by the time pirating books becomes a serious problem, digital rights management will have progressed to the point that most pirating can be prevented." In Winters's opinion, publishers don't have to eliminate all possibilities of book piracy, they just have to make it less attractive than spending a few minutes and a few dollars downloading a legal copy. Web-based registration systems similar to those used in Windows XP promise to do just that.

DOES LICENSING WORK IN SCHOOLS?

Richardson (Texas) Independent School District (RISD) has licensed several digital books for use in its Web development classes. Lazette Woods, director of instructional technology for RISD, says that licensing has "worked wonderfully for us." She's pleased that when her district adopts new software, it doesn't have to buy new books as well; its yearly license terms ensure that it receives updated books at no charge.

John Moore, a computer teacher at Lake Highlands High School in the Richardson district, also speaks highly of digital book licensing. "Using PDFs has made things a ton easier for me," Moore says. "Kids lose handouts and forget to bring textbooks to class, but digital textbooks are always on the computers they use." Moore says that students don't find electronic textbooks difficult to use -- they just toggle between the book's window and the window containing the program they're using. "For any teacher in a computer lab, it's a tremendous asset," he says.

WILL DIGITAL BOOK LICENSING TAKE OVER?

Schools won't be licensing all their textbooks as digital files anytime soon. Until every student gets a laptop or high-resolution e-book reader, most school texts still must be printed. English and history texts can't be easily read from a computer screen, and for hardcover textbooks that are used year after year or for paperbacks, such as student copies of The Canterbury Tales, for example, digital book licensing isn't any cheaper or any more convenient than hard-bound books.

For technology texts, however, licensing is likely to become the norm. Right now, Visibooks and Syngress are the only computer book publishers that provide books as digital files, but this will change soon. The Texas Education Agency already has stated that, beginning in 2004, all computer book vendors selling to Texas schools must provide their books in digital format. Other school systems, seeing the advantages of book licensing, are bound to do the same.

The rise of digital book licensing mirrors that of the computer industry itself. Just as separating hardware from software spawned new industries and the personal computer, decoupling content from the paper that traditionally contains it can benefit both publishers and schools. Computer book licensing is in its infancy, but the convenience and cost savings it brings soon will make it increasingly popular among schools nationwide.

Article by Chris Charuhas
Education World®
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