eBookNewser Interviews CafeScribe's Bryce Johnson

CafeScribe is an eBook publisher and social networking platform for textbooks. Follett Higher Education Groupe bought the company in 2008, and CafeScribe is now in 850 college bookstores. EBookNewser caught up with CafeScribe CEO, Bryce Johnson, to talk about the evolution of digital textbooks. EBN: With all of the new eReaders entering the market, it seems like eBooks are really taking off. How do you think that digital publishing is evolving? BJ: I totally agree. We entered the space in 2005. At one point in time everyone said, "eTextbooks? You're crazy." But now a lot of people can see the benefits of what they can do with electronic textbooks. EBN: What is your company's mission? BJ: We want to be where the student is when they are making their purchase decision. They are making that decision in the bookstore either on campus or online. So we are there. We also want to be where professors are, so we work with systems that are already in place in institutions. We use the MMS systems like Blackboard and Angel Learning, because professors are already used to using these. We now have the ability to link to online text books. A professor can publish an assignment and say read chapter 1, and send a link to the chapter. You can link to a section of the book. This brings access to the professors and to the students. EBN: Can students purchase these eTextbooks by chapter? BJ: There have been a couple of scenarios in which companies have published by chapter, but that is not common. It would be great to get there, but we are still waiting for the publishers to get to that point. EBN: Are students buying eTextbooks? BJ: We are seeing momentum. The rollout of the iPad and other devices like that will help facilitate wide adoption. I think we are still early in this wave. Price and convenience are important factors for students. ETextbooks are 50% cheaper and that is a real value proposition for students. They are also light weight, so you don't have to lug 35 pounds of books across campus. The search process is also much quicker. You can run a search in an eBook instead of having to try to flip through text book pages and trying to remember where something is. Students are getting more comfortable with technology in the classroom and this will help drive adoption. EBN: eTextbooks are half the price. That is interesting. How can text book publishers afford to cut prices in half? BJ: The production is easier. They give us the file and we do the DRM enabling so that the books can't be shared. Also, the demand is there. They know that students want this, so they want to be there. EBN: But what about devices? Amazon found that the Kindle DX wasn't popular with students and iPads can be expensive. BJ: We did research and found that black and white readers are hard for students. They like color and the iPad does a great job at that. But price is still an issue with the iPad. If it is really expensive, students won't buy it. We see far more students reading on netbooks and laptops than on eReaders. My hunch is that it is going to take time for them to adopt eReaders because of price and usability.

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eBookNewser Interviews CafeScribe's Bryce Johnson

Dianna Dilworth

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Dianna Dilworth