Houghton Mifflin and netLibrary team up for a business model that both hope to replicate

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Jan, 2001

Dave Serbun, director of technology for Houghton Mifflin's (Boston, MA) college division, anticipates a day when content from an eBook becomes a hub of a much larger learning program. Right now, the publishing house is indeed likely to offer up to 30 companion products with a textbook, and online components are likely to include simulation programs, tutorial programs, computerized study modules or assessments. While a few of these companion products might be saleable, the more common model is to provide them free with a textbook adoption. That market expectation, points out Serbun, puts the publisher in a difficult position: students often see only the high-priced, printed textbook and not the related resources. Serbun regards the eBook as a first step in moving toward a collection of related resources and purchase options that are more transparent to the student user.

Technically, Houghton Mifflin's first venture into eBooks was with a history CD-ROM in 1993. The company more recently ran a pilot program with Reciprocal Inc. (New York, NY, www.reciprocal.com) that indicated students have an interest in online e-books, and last month Houghton Mifflin signed its first deal to create eBooks with netLibrary's MetaText Product Group (Boulder, CO. www.netlibrary.com and www.metatext.com). Serbun expects to make several such announcements with eBook technology providers as Houghton Mifflin explores the market and the various features offered by companies providing eBook technology.

Similarly, netLibrary is working on similar MetaText agreements with other textbook publishers. They recently announced plans to convert dozens of textbooks from Thomson Learning's South-Western and Wadsworth Group companies. Serbun anticipates closing other deals soon.

And eBooks are simply one of many online initiatives at Houghton Mifflin. Houghton Mifflin is also pursuing custom publishing through its Bibliobase offering. It publishes content for both WebCT and Blackboard, and it has created complete online courses in areas such as calculus on its own. Serbun is enthusiastic about new initiatives which are on the drawing board but not for public discussion.

The netLibrary Deal

Meta Text is an eBook technology designed specifically for education. Houghton Mifflin will initially create ten MetaText titles in a wide range of academic disciplines. As with the traditional print version, the text will be a distinct edition that cannot be disaggregated in a custom publishing model. Professors will adopt the text, and students will purchase it as an option to the print version. Upcoming work with eBooks may well identify certain disciplines or institutional-types that favor the e-book option, but Serbun regards it mostly as an issue of learning styles and learning preferences. He is especially interested in pursuing research into whether the online books improve learning.

The MetaText textbooks offer students the ability to annotate, navigate, highlight and bookmark texts. The books also include links, and they are organized by topic, not arbitrary page breaks. Students have a personalized home page that serves as a portal to all of their MetaText resources associated with the course, including the syllabus, class announcements and other class communications. Professors can use MetaText to build an online syllabus, manage class rosters, annotate texts and make class announcements.

netLibrary hosts the service. Houghton Mifflin sales reps bring it to market. netLibrary eBooks are downloaded to the users PC and accessed with the netLibrary Reader, a free software application.

Houghton Mifflin Company and netLibrary have previously worked together to make Houghton Mifflin Trade & Reference titles available as eBooks to netLibrary's institutional customers and they integrated The American heritage Dictionary of the English Language into netLibrary's online eBook offering.

netLibrary's Bigger Picture

Apart from the MetaText division, netLibrary sells academic collections of eBooks to libraries. netLibrary creates eBook versions of books from 350 publishers and recently surpassed 32,000 titles. That number grows by more than 100 titles daily. Institutions own each book in their selected collection forever. Acting as a distributor, netLibrary never buys the rights to the books, and publishers maintain the copyright. Institutions pay netLibrary either an annual access fee or a perpetual access fee.

Students can examine a book for fifteen minutes before checking it out. Librarians set the amount of time for which students can check a book out, and a students download simply expires at that time. The system allows for annotations and bookmarking, and those notes are saved and overlaid appropriately if a student checks the book out a second time. Limited amounts of text can be copied and put into Microsoft Word, and the system automatically appends a citation.

Markets include university libraries, K-12 libraries, corporate libraries and libraries for online institutions. The minimum purchase is 500 titles and a university's recent purchase of 16,000 titles is one of the largest sales to date.