DCL was on hand at Digital Book World and CEO Mark Gross spoke with GoodEReader about a topic that was a pervasive theme at this year’s event, especially in light of Apple’s new initiatives last week, namely the digital publication of textbooks. While the concept of digital textbooks at the higher education level became a widespread topic of discussion in the past couple of years, new movements in digital publishing have made digital textbooks a more viable option in even public education. Several countries worldwide are working on future planning to go entirely digital in education in even the elementary school grades.
Gross explained some of the fallacies behind running beliefs in the public’s mind concerning digital textbooks, primarily that the textbooks will be profoundly cheaper and that the public education sector will not be able to keep up financially with the rising costs of providing e-reader devices to all of the K through 12th grade students.
Data Conversion Laboratory initially spoke to GoodEReader in an interview in December about the status of poorly formatted ebooks and how those titles are affecting the market as a whole, so it should come as no surprise that DCL can project on how poorly formatted or converted digital textbooks can negatively impact education, possibly going so far as to cause a consumer backlash against electronic reading if the formatting of required reading material is subpar.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
