…besides the fact that they break common spelling and capitalization rules? College students.

iTunes U was (and still is) a wealth of educational podcasts produced by some of the top colleges and universities around the world. For years K-12 has been asking for it’s own part of the iTunes U playground, but it was only until recently that we were allowed in. That didn’t stop innovative K-12 folks from creating and sharing great work, but we had to do it on our own.

I have found the same to be true in the eBook arena. When I started my research 3 years ago, I had several vendors claim that they could eliminate the backpacks at my school. They would work with the publishers to get all of our physical textbooks in a digital format, all I had to do was turn over my book list. Easy right? I wish.

Each and every one would eventually come back and only offer books for our AP courses, which of course used college level textbooks. The other books, they could not obtain the rights to the digital copy from the publisher. It wasn’t that the digital version did not exist; it was that the publishers would not release them to the 3rd party reseller.

Why? Simple economics. Just like with iTunes U.

Every college student on the planet has to purchase their textbooks for every class, every semester. These textbooks (particularly in the sciences) are constantly updating. How many of you remember spending over $100 on a Biology book only to find out you got a lousy buy-back price because a new edition was being released next year? The text book industry is huge and they make a lot of money every semester from college students. They are a prime market for digital versions of textbooks. Because they are such a huge market, you can find college edition digital books in a variety of formats: Kindle, Nook, and any variety of online web based applications.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the K-12 market. Still living in the dark ages of the textbook adoption cycle where new books are adopted (doesn’t that sound all warm and fuzzy) every 6-8 years. Yes folks, 6-8 years! I remember my first year of teaching the Social Studies textbook was the same one I used when I was in middle school.  My favorite line was, that according to the authors, we many never see the Berlin Wall fall down in our life time. Now I’ve been teaching for a few years, but I’m not that old.

Since K-12 schools “adopt” new books every 6-8 years, what is the rush for producing digital content at the same rate as higher ed? This was my constant road block in this process, letting publishers know that K-12 was not satisfied with this snail pace production schedule.