How Much Longer For EFL/ESL Textbooks?

Yesterday’s news – that the full-length Oxford English Dictionary will henceforth be available only in digital format – pushed something that has been buzzing around in my mind into tipping-point territory. It joined forces with other recent news – that USA Today is making big cuts in the staffing of its print-based edition in favor of online; that Amazon is now selling more e-books than hardcover ones; that Newsweek, the loss-making magazine company, was sold for a symbolic dollar; and that computer manufacturers are currently rushing out iPad wannabe tablets to surf on the massive sales success of that reader-like device – to lead me to ponder on how long the EFL/ESL paper-based textbook can survive in a rapidly digitizing world.

The ELT industry seems to be in a state of semi-denial, continuing the traditional marketing investment in each year’s new editions and collections while quietly figuring out how long the party is going to last. Some publishers – Pearson with its involvement with social language-learning site LiveMocha; Cambridge with its 50% buyout of the business-oriented English360.com, and McMillan with its efforts around the teacher-centric OneStopEnglish.com, are already moving a few eggs out of the paper-based basket while figuring out how to manage the conundrum of building up a digital presence while continuing to milk the physical cash cows. Others seem to be adopting an ostrich-like stance, making only symbolic efforts at playing the digital game and pretty much hiding their heads in the sand, paralyzed at the prospect of fundamental and permanent change in the “one textbook, one workbook, every learner, every year” formula that has produced such nice revenue streams until now.

As stated by Graham Stanley in a prescient blog post a little over a year ago, the temptation in these situations is always to believe that a little added-value to the existing product will be enough to see off the new-form rivals, much as the music industry did for most of the previous decade.

But the EFL/ESL texbook will be subject, if anything, to even more pressure for change. The need to be very careful about presenting appropriate content by age, culture/religion and proficiency level has become ever-harder to accomplish with a single edition. Young people, in particular, are becoming increasingly allergic to paper-based educational formats lacking interactivity and social networking features (I know this from personal experience with my children aged 10 and 14, for whom exhortations to do assignments in their language workbooks are about as popular as requests that they take out the trash. When given the option, they go for the trash every time). The input material in textbooks seems to age faster than ever, especially when publishers try to make them “current” (Pussycat Dolls? Daddy, that is so 2009). The complaints about the weight of textbooks in backpacks becomes louder by the semester; and sooner or later the “dead trees” ecology argument will find the target as well. Finally, the learning of correct pronunciation is becoming more solidified as a learner demand, and this is one area where textbooks have run out of rabbits to un-hat – the effort with back-of-cover CD-Roms or DVD-Roms having run its natural course.

So Is The Clock Ticking?

Is there a future for ye olde chapter & verse ELT textbook over the next decade or so? In the medium term (five years), almost certainly. The books themselves have gotten a lot better, and this alone will tamp down the students’ carping for a while. The “wiring” of schools, in particular those in the state sector, is proving painfully slow once the relatively easy option of Interactive Whiteboards has been checked off. It will be years until the average 12-year-old will be expected to come to class with his e-tablet, much as he or she is expected to purchase stationery supplies ahead of the start of classes today. And many classrooms in the poorer parts of the developing world still lack electricity, let alone a broadband connection or wi-fi, so paper-based materials (if they’re lucky) and chalkboards will continue to be relevant in these settings for some time to come.

But the writing, longer-term, does indeed seem to be on the wall. I do think, however, that despite the widespread declared enthusiasm for “edtech” and all its related cyber-baubles, teachers still – and will continue to – rely on a quality ELT textbook as the pedagogical “anchor” of their teaching, and schools are also probably more comfortable having such an expert-authored curriculum than being without. I can easily see an emerging norm where textbooks are phased out for learners in favor of online platforms, both in the classroom and outside of it; while the publishers, in addition to investing in those types of platforms, focus their efforts textbook-wise on teachers and the related teacher training that allows them to get the best out of the material. The unit sales volumes for physical books will be nothing like they’ve been to date; but with the right understanding of how to achieve the transition from physical to digital (something, admittedly, easier to describe than to implement) the best of the EFL / ESL publishers should be able to enjoy the fruits of their authors’ experience and brain-power for some time yet.