Apple iPAD "Bites" Into TextBooks

Jan. 20, 2012 - PRLog -- BearCreekResearch examines the kinks of the Apple electronic proposal and proposes a possible solution for a win-win outcome!

Here Comes What I predict will become the iPad Accounting Theory:

”I spent $300 a quarter in college for new textbooks, $200 if used. A year of books was trivially $1k, and over 4 years easily $3k. Factoring reselling and such, it's still over $2k.
An iPad plus 40 texts at $20 each would have only cost me $1.3k”

Here Comes the predictable arguments against using the iPad: It is trying to be the Monopoly on textbooks via the EULA … ”the publishing EULA states that the textbook must be apple exclusive,

http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/ibooks-2-lets-authors-set-textbook-prices-in-exchange-for-apple/

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/01/19/ibooks-author-eula

What about The $600 Cost? Again, the iPad Costs might cost a Bundle upfront and yes, it can Break but what is the true Textbook cost and possible “breakability”?”
However, given a suitably protective iPad case, the same is true of an iPad containing all 6 books of your current subjects as well as the books from the last three years in case you want to look something up you remember reading about two years ago. And even with such a protective case, the iPad is smaller and lighter than even the smallest of those textbooks. Oh, and it costs about the same when you figure in $499 for the iPad and $15 for each of those 6 books, a total of $589, versus $90 for each of those books, a total of $540. Even at $75 wholesale cost per book, you end up breaking even at just 9 books (8.3, actually).

Textbooks have a surprisingly high "breakage" rate. Not so much from dropping while closed (unless they hit the ground just right), but dropping while open (pages rip and crease), having things dropped on them while they are in a large stack because the student is trying to go between multiple different sources, having bindings broken because the student couldn't be bothered to find a slip of paper to use as a bookmark, etc.

With all that having been said on the release comments, the real pickle is choosing how to release content on MULTIPLE PLATFORMS, MULTIPLE DEVICES and SATISFY AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT LAWS, including royalty distributions.

BearCreekResearch proposes the EULA revise its path toward a more common sense approach – the ultimate secret weapon- and adopt a Creative Commons layering of License and Copyright policies, again, across multiple platforms and devices.

“Our public copyright licenses incorporate a unique and innovative “three-layer” design. Each license begins as a traditional legal tool, in the kind of language and text formats that most lawyers know and love. We call this the Legal Code layer of each license.
But since most creators, educators, and scientists are not in fact lawyers, we also make the licenses available in a format that normal people can read — the Commons Deed (also known as the “human readable” version of the license). The Commons Deed is a handy reference for licensors and licensees, summarizing and expressing some of the most important terms and conditions. Think of the Commons Deed as a user-friendly interface to the Legal Code beneath, although the Deed itself is not a license, and its contents are not part of the Legal Code itself.
The final layer of the license design recognizes that software, from search engines to office productivity to music editing, plays an enormous role in the creation, copying, discovery, and distribution of works. In order to make it easy for the Web to know when a work is available under a Creative Commons license, we provide a “machine readable” version of the license — a summary of the key freedoms and obligations written into a format that software systems, search engines, and other kinds of technology can understand. We developed a standardized way to describe licenses that software can understand called CC Rights Expression Language (CC REL) to accomplish this.
Searching for open content is an important function enabled by our approach. You can use Googleto search for Creative Commons content, look for pictures at Flickr, albums at Jamendo, and general media at spinxpress. The Wikimedia Commons, the multimedia repository of Wikipedia, is a core user of our licenses as well.
Taken together, these three layers of licenses ensure that the spectrum of rights isn’t just a legal concept. It’s something that the creators of works can understand, their users can understand, and even the Web itself can understand.”
The Creative Commons Licenses

Attribution
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.


Attribution-ShareAlike

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution-NonCommercial

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Creative Commons also provide tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain. Creative Commons CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and Creative Commons Public Domain Mark allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.

See, how this all begins to make Common Sense
BearCreekResearch has found enough evidence that people are just not going to go “arm in arm” with Apple down this rosey publishing path:

iBooks Author is beautiful but you can only use it to sell through Apple iBookstore
The license agreement to Apple's new iBooks Author tool for creating electronic textbooks has a very peculiar clause:

If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

I find that clause unacceptable and ridiculous. If I create a book, I want to be able to sell it anywhere I want, not only through Apple. I no more want to restrict my sales to their store than I want to restrict them on Amazon or anywhere else.
You can find the full license agreement by going to the iBooks Author menu, choose About iBooks Author, and then click License Agreement in the About box that appears.

Note that it didn't have to be this way. The files that iBooks Author creates are pretty reasonable EPUB files (masked with the .ibooks extension) and can be read in NOOK and other EPUB readers. You can unzip them and see the EPUB files inside.