® QUESTION 1 What are you doing differently to two years ago? “


Users and customers have different expectations about what they want/need


All publishers spoke of the massive paradigm shift that has occurred in little over two years, highlighting the degree to which the tablet form factor itself has changed things. A num- ber of publishers spoke about the importance of considering the Windows operating system, since this is often the pre- ferred platform of choice for teachers. Particular emphasis was placed on the experimental nature of a lot of projects undertaken by educational publishers in such a nascent mar- ketplace, such as the interactive aspects of ebooks – but this came alongside a qualification that new products had to be based on research rather than just firing blind. This research is now much easier to obtain, with fresh data collected over a number of years in the digital market place.


Most tellingly, nearly all spoke of the demand coming from the bottom up, specifically from teachers and schools, so not just higher-educational institutions (something we as a company have addressed before is the requirement for educational publishing to meet the needs of a comprehensive range of clients, not just university-level publishers). This was further supplemented by the point that they’ve discovered there is a distinction between the “customer” and the “end user”, and that both of these groups have a range of diverse needs that aren’t necessarily met by conversion methods alone.


An interesting recent discovery includes the benefits of pub- lishing ebooks for reluctant readers who are more engaged in digital books than the print counterparts. The impact of digital reading on dyslexic students has been reported to be somewhat transformational due to the ability to expand text, which makes reading much easier. Publishers have picked up on these developments over the past couple of years and are able to direct their publishing plans accordingly.


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