New Digital Tools Let Professors Tailor Their Own Textbooks for Under $20
And that’s just one option, along with mix-and-match Web sites from big publishers and libraries of open-source content
By Alex Campbell
FOR HIS marketing course at he University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Daniel Flint wanted his students to read a white paper on public relations, a couple of
case studies, an industry report, and
a chapter of a forthcoming book.
So he created a textbook with just
that—more than 100 pages of mate-
rial in one customized package for
his students.
Mr. Flint, a professor of marketing at the university, used a new
build-your-own-textbook service
called AcademicPub, which arranged payment of royalties and
compiled the material for publication. His students were given three
options for buying the book: Download a digital edition for $14.95, get
it in paperback for $27, or go for the
hardcover for $45.
The idea of customized textbooks
has been around for years, but until
recently use of the option was rare.
But these days more professors appear to be taking a Frankensteinian
approach to their textbooks—
making something new from spare parts,
thanks to new digital tools, rather
than simply assigning an existing
tome.
And professors have more options
to do so, with upstarts like AcademicPub, mix-and-match Web sites
from major publishers, and a growing libraries of open-source content
that they can edit on their own.
“It’s sort of like a perfect storm for
making real, substantive change” in
the publishing industry, said Richard
Baraniuk, a co-founder of Connex-
ions, one of the first Web collections
of free educational material. There
are more and more cheaper options,
with more and more credibility, as
fewer and fewer students say they
can afford traditional textbooks.
Some forces may limit the adoption, though, such as the limited libraries of some build-your-own-textbook services and a general reluctance by professors to try a new
model.
A Publishing Upstart
AcademicPub started this April,
and its leaders have expanded its library to two million pieces of content from 75 publishers, including
Cambridge University Press, Prince-
COURTESy OF DAnIEL FLInT
Daniel Flint, a professor of marketing at the U. of Tennessee at Knoxville,
used a service called AcademicPub to create his own e-textbook, priced at $14.95.
Custom-built textbooks from
AcademicPub come in both print
and electronic versions.
Professors put them together
on a Web site by selecting from
among two million articles and
monographs from 75 different
academic publishers. They can
also pull other material from the
Internet, like newspaper articles,
and the site’s software will check
for copyright clearances. It then
formats the sources into a book
with a table of contents.
ACADEMICPUB
ton University Press, and Harvard
and MIT’s business publishers. And
instructors can pull in any kind of
free content from the Web, said Car-
oline Vanderlip, chief executive of
SharedBook, which runs Academic-
Pub.
“We think the more
all this becomes
digital, the more
people will want
to customize.”
fessors will look elsewhere.
Ms. Vanderlip acknowledges that
the industry’s giants “have their own
custom-pub solutions,” but she said
the market is big enough that she
doesn’t need to aim for every professor. “It’s not my goal to have every piece of content ever written,”
she said.
Slow but Steady Growth
Professors have long been able to
tailor copyrighted textbooks, but in
the past it had been a clunky process. Eric Frank, founder of Flat
World Knowledge, should know.
When he worked at Pearson, the
company’s custom-textbook option
often involved taking books apart
and putting them back together at
the production facility. “It’s kind of
like surgery with a butcher knife,”
he said.
Mr. Frank became interested in
