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Normally, financial news that I find interesting is limited to that of the stocks in my slender portfolio—and a few that I watch out of sheer, morbid curiosity. However, the recent “recommendation” thrown at McGraw-Hill caught my eye. Long a leader in the paper textbook industry, McGraw-Hill’s sales figures have been so poor that it’s being urged to give up its education ‘branch’ altogether. Translation: no more paper textbooks.

This news struck me as odd, being that recent Association of American Publishers numbers have painted the educational book market as “holding steady” around the 5.5 billion-dollar mark.

The corporation’s stock went down 10% after its subsidiary Standard & Poor’s downgraded the US credit rating; in a rather fun twist, S&P pulled in twice as much income as McGraw-Hill last year. According to the article I read the Eduction textbook portion of McGraw-Hill’s corporation is dragging down the rest of the company.

One may ask why this bit of news would be interesting to an eBook news writer/self-publisher. My first thought upon reading it last night was to wonder: “Which digital literature purveyor is going to step in to offer an eBook alternative to the thousands of schools that currently use McGraw-Hill textbooks?”

Many schools were already considering switching to e-textbooks–simply for the savings in cost–but have been waiting to move until certain titles were available. This latest news may just force their hand as paper textbooks will likely go up even more in price due to a lack of supply, if those from McGraw–Hill go extinct. On a positive note, if the company does indeed abandon paper textbook-making, there should be a glut of their stock available on Half.com or eBay, at least for awhile.

Among other thing tied to the theme of the McGraw-Hill article was a health report on schoolchildren suffering back problems due to being overly burdened by larger and larger textbooks-en-backpack. My oldest child just started high school and was happy to jump on the online courses offered this year by her school verses lugging around, storing and caring for approximately 65 lbs. of books; this is not including supplies and peripherals that go along with each class. Besides the online classes our daughter’s school also offered a tablet for purchase this year; its tall, rectangular form stood out nicely among the school-approved laptops, though it was merely a Viewsonic Viewbook, with a 7” (diagonally) screen.  I was also happy to see her school avoiding costs to both student and budget by urging the freshmen to read Romeo & Juliet on Project Gutenberg, as well as the smattering of short stories required for viewing during the coming year.

With McGraw Hill being pushed to—and considering a–jump out of the Education game for good, at least as far as paper publication goes, I foresee both static and interactive e-Textbooks growing by leaps and bounds, as well as a general push toward off-brand (i. e. cheaper) tablets for middle-school and high-school students alike.

Via Greene Ink

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