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The Biggest Scam in Publishing?

November 27, 2018 By Mercy Pilkington 7 Comments

The digital publishing revolution is so old that a great many reading consumers might not be able to envision a time when they couldn’t simply pop online to order a book, download a new title from their favorite author, or use an app or PDF for supplemental book material. eBooks and digital publishing have simply become a part of everyday life for many people.

But there’s one branch of the publishing family tree that has still not caught up with the times: educational publishing. Nearly every facet of education has been left in the dust when it comes to access, price, and readily available updates to texts. When this digital publishing took off in a major way, educational publishers were supposedly going to insert e-textbooks into every classroom from preschool through grad school.

What’s the holdup? There are a lot of factors stopping the widespread switch to files instead of paper, but that’s only one factor in educational publishing.

The other is the way new concepts are discovered, researched, and published to begin with. Scientific research is carefully horded by academic publishers, keeping anyone without deep pockets from accessing the findings. What’s even more concerning is that many research projects are funded by the taxpayers before going straight to the publisher’s paywall.

In some ways, it’s like the history of forceps (yes, that often-controversial instrument of childbirth). When forceps were first invented, they were a carefully guarded secret. It’s not that they were whacky-science or anything, but simply that the creator could force families to pay handsomely for a better chance at surviving the procedure. The Chamberlen family guarded their invention and were known to only provide medical care to wealthy and even royal patients. The rest of the commoners could simply die in childbirth if they couldn’t pay.

That continues to be the attitude in academic and scientific publishing. If you want to know the outcome of an expensive research project, you won’t find that information for free, regardless of who footed the bill for it. Until steps are taken to ensure that scientific findings are available to all, the gatekeepers will continue to serve only the wealthy who can foot the bill.

Mercy Pilkington

Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.

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Filed Under: Digital Publishing News



  • Igor Engelen

    I Think one part of the problem is that schools aren’t always ready to change.

    It’s not exactly the same but here in Belgium we have a software platform for schools that has proven to work very well, and offers advantages over the classical approach when it comes to communication, follow up of children’s scorecard etc
    This year my son switched schools and there they refuse to use all functionality of the system and prefer to stick to old ways of informing parents and unclear low quality software that even their own IT department actually doesn’t want.

    Personally I don’t understand reluctance towards spreading and accepting new technologies. I also don’t understand people that don’t want to keep learning new things. But I guess I’m weird that way. 🙂

  • kfg

    “The digital publishing revolution is so old that a great many reading
    consumers might not be able to envision a time when they couldn’t simply
    pop online to order a book . . .”

    A lot of people are rather young.

  • Heidi Steindel

    As a former college student I would rather have educational books in a physical book and not an ebook unless color eink comes out

  • Sportbike Mike

    As a current college student I bought my first e-reader to read textbooks. To be fair, digital ones are part of the tuition so this saves me lots of money.

  • Sportbike Mike

    Mercy, you may be interested in the book “Dream Hoarders” by Richard V. Reeves. It’s not made for purple like us, and that’s all the more reason to read it. It has cleared up a lot of things for me, shows where the roadblocks are, and unintentionally, what is needed to get around them. It’s a good book if you want to understand privilege and how the rich get and stay richer.

  • Emily Patterson-Kane

    So what is the suggested solution that does not make researchers pay to publish?

  • Derpington

    You do realize you can read E-books on devices other than E-readers, do you?
    Kobo, Amazon, they all got app and desktop means for reading your E-books.

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