The Future of the Textbook Industry

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Merrian Webster defines Publishing as: “The business or profession of the commercial production and issuance of literature, information, musical scores or sometimes recordings, or art.” This essay will review publishing from its beginnings in the 16th century, describe how technology in the 21st century has disrupted the profession of publishing. This paper will also discuss where we are today and the trajectory of the industry for the next decade.

As publishing itself is a vast universe encompassing literary books, fiction, non-fiction books, newspapers, magazines, journals, periodicals, music, art, movie scripts, plays, software, blogs, etc. both in print and electronic. This essay will be limited to the discussion of literary books, fiction and non-fiction. We will not spend much time discussing the history of books, however it is proper to quickly mention that the history of books dates back about 5,000 years when ancient Egyptians would write on a plant that grew along the Nile River called Papyrus. Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. The Codex as a form of book can be dated back to the end of the first century but it gained popularity in the Christian community in the 3rd and 4th centuries . This format of books was more economical, as both sides of the writing material could be used, it was portable, searchable and easy to conceal. Manuscript books began to supplant scrolls in Antiquity. Until the late middle ages, the great majority of books were written in monasteries by scribes, who had high social status. For this reason, the great majority of books in the Western world are of religious content. The introduction of the printing press in 1455 was a disruptive technology that brought with it an explosi...

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Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_book

New: Book Sales Statistics (including E-Books) website: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves.htm

Press Center Website: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/print_library.html

New: Book Sales Statistics (including E-Books) website: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2010_Oct/AugustStatsPressRelease.htm

Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_ebook

Forbes.com magazine article: knowledge@Wharton Electronic textbooks? You bet

McGraw-Hill introduce new custom publishing platform: Create website:

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/10/11/mcgraw-hill-introduce-new-custom-publishing-platform-create/

Business week: Amazon E-Book Market Share to Fall as Industry Grows (Update2)

February 16, 2010, 4:17 PM EST

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