“This is a mess.” – Joe Bill Watkins, a lobbyist for the Association of American Publishers, as quoted on a budget proposal that would delay spending $318 million on textbooks in Texas.

The TeleRead take: Ouch! The Associated Press story is from April 11, but whatever has happened since then, publishers should regard this as a wake-up call. “Publishers,” the article correctly notes, “invest millions of dollars in Texas because texts adopted in the state of 4.1 million schoolchildren are marketed in dozens of other states.” The cuts will keep many thousands of Lone Star children reading obsolete textbooks. What poetic justice it is that at least one of the books says Democrat Ann Richards–rather than the present Republican, Rick Perry–is governor. Quite fittingly, a national report from the publishers’ association notes that less than a penny of every dollar spent on education goes for textbooks on the average. Still, $318 million, even well spent, is a scary sum. Might electronic books eventually give the taxpayers more for their money?

Of the several hundred million now envisioned for the delayed buys of p-books in Texas, imagine how much would be going for paper and ink as opposed to actual information. A chance for the e-book biz, especially the digital arms of large publishers, to move in? To preserve the textbook habit in an e-context? And keep the material up to date without having to go back to press? Well, maybe. Schools in Texas are a long way from providing each student with a portable computer, as Maine schools are doing at the seventh grade level. But that’s the future. And the big question is, “How much of the material will come from the Net at large and how much from e-publishers?”

By refusing to adopt a standard consumer format–something versatile that could accommodate the needs of textbook publishers and users–the industry is missing out on a major opportunity. Ditto if a well-stocked national digital library system does not come into existence for students and others. Time for schools, libraries, PTAs and publishers to team up and lobby as deftly as defense contractors do for good old American cash?

Related update on the format standards question: Next week–we wanted it to be this week but most likely have been delayed–TeleRead will release an account of a constructive conversation with the Open eBook Forum on this issue. One highlight? Despite the efforts of some very dedicated people, it looks as if e-book readers can forget about a standard consumer-level format in 2003–and it’s not clear when one will be coming after that. Meanwhile here are a few more stray thoughts. Publishers use states such as California and Texas to set textbook standards to keep costs down; now isn’t it time to apply the same logic to e-book formats at the consumer level?

Idea: What if the big textbook states approached the OeBF and agreed to spend a certain amount on digital material if consumer format standards were in place? Publishers themselves might want to help the OeBF with grants for techies to take time out from their regular jobs and act more quickly on format issue. Five years is just too long to keep waiting for the format paradise that Microsoft’s Dick Brass and Steve Stone promised in ’98 in setting up the OeBF.

Even better, textbook publishers and others could help the cause by listening to Jon Noring, an OeBF participant, who, as we’ve repeatedly noted, has some very specific and promising solutions that address publishers’ piracy concerns. Noring’s plan could speed things up considerably.

Remember, publishing is like any other business. Time is money. In lost opportunities–in delaying the move to digital books–the format chaos is costing e-publishers many times more than piracy would. Especially, digital textbooks count in market development. Today’s reader of e-textbooks could be tomorrow’s reader of trade e-books. If publishers don’t wise up, then book sales of all kinds will remain far below their potential as more and more children grow up in a digital world.

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