Why should a published spin a web ?

Reasons for an educational Publisher to invest in a Web site

General Context:

A wide range of companies in all fields have developed Web sites for a variety of reasons:

• Corporate image.
• Product advertising:
• Customer Support.

Many print publishers have Web sites which provide information mainly related to their products. For example:

• McGraw-Hill has an extensive US Web site with advertising, information, and sales offers as well as limited support for customer enquiries regarding most of its print products and its subsidiary companies (including MacMillan).
• Reed Books UK (also Secker & Warburg, Minerva paperbacks) has a large advertising site. Reed Education Australia also provides an site with information about Rigby, Heineman and other subsidiaries. It's Heineman section has subject based "pages" Heineman Maths mainly offering links to a selection of free services provided by other groups around the world.

Many companies have recognised that they need to provide attractive information at their site to ensure that people using the Web will:

• store the company's site location as a "bookmark" (5) inside their own computer software
• publish the site address on another site as a form of free recommendation
• return to the site when the possibility of more extensive "pay per view" services become possible.

Educational sites will become increasingly important:

• Education is one of the fast growing areas of Web use. It is currently a very widespread "buzzword" among students, teachers, parents, schools, and even educational systems (in particular the Victorian Government). The use of the Web (1) by schools all over the world is escalating rapidly. During the last six months that I have been searching the Web for "sites" (2), I have noticed that the number, amount of information and quality of information in this specific interest area alone has improved markedly.
  
• School communities and the government are very eager to encourage all teachers to use the Web. Use of "high" technology tools by teachers was a significant part of recent Victorian and national industrial award discussions for teachers. Teachers recognise that familiarity with the Web will enhance their career advancement within the educational system. They also recognise that they have access to materials on the Web that may not be available in other forms, and once obtained, these materials can be easily changed on computer for use with a specific student group.
  
• The potential users in schools are not limited to teachers. Students will learn to get information, services and products through exposure to use of the web at school. They will take home this knowledge and apply purchasing pressure to parents if the experience was seen to be educationally valuable and/ or enjoyable.

Reasons for an educational publisher to maintain a web site.

• Corporate image. It is an advantage to be seen by your market as a participator in new innovations such as the Web. It gives the market the sense that a company is planning for the future and therefore has a bright future. It may also give the market a sense of the companies technological competency.
  It is possible to do this at very little cost (see below) as most publishers seem to have done.
  
• Product advertising: Many businesses advertise their products extensively on the Web. The information usually includes pictures in a format similar to brochures, as well as technical specifications, product reviews and other sites. Software publishers increasingly send users, via email, a demonstration version of their software in the hope that they will begin using it, become familiar and purchase the retail version.
  Educational publishers would increasingly gain an edge in advertising if they ensured that details of their products were always available on the Web. Schools and teachers are constantly flooded with brochures about products from a large number of publishers. In many cases, these are misdirected, lost or thrown in the trash. Once a teacher has placed a bookmark for your product list in their computer, they may check it before purchasing an alternative product even when there is no brochure from you. They may request a replacement brochure or even place an order.
  
• Customer Support. Many companies use the Web initially to provide a list of services and contact numbers, business addresses and "email" (6) inquiries.
  A teacher is attracted to a product that is "supported on the Web" because it implies that they themselves are knowledgeable about how to use the Web. This subtly improves their self esteem and promotion prospects. They also get the sense that they are buying a product with an "unlimited" capacity to have value added to it through the Web.
  The levels of customer support the publisher actually chooses to provide are very flexible (see below) .
  

Levels of development in an educational publishing Web site

• Store Front. Most Web sites are merely "fronts" for corporate image. All that is needed is some interesting graphics and information lifted from current "hard copy" brochures.
  Maintenance required: Add pages for new products using similar material as hardcopy.
  
• Product Information: Customers appreciate, and may be encouraged to purchase, if provided with more detailed and technical information about products e.g. Chapter headings, sample page(s), reviews, physical size, pages, cost, distributor contacts.
  Maintenance required: Add pages for new products using similar material as hardcopy.
  
• Support related to products sold
  
  • Links to Related Information: Collect and logically group large number of links to other lists of links and information sites provided by everyone BUT your direct opposition. Novice users may think that your company actually provides these services and give the company the credit and customer loyalty. Others may just find your list useful and return there for this service rather than your products themselves, but nevertheless be exposed to advertising and have your product links available when needed.
    Most publisher web sites, I have visited are at this level of development even though some have expanded their links and product information more than others.
    Additional maintenance required: Survey Web and sift and organise some of Web sites the you feel would be useful to specific groups of your customers (i.e. a few hours a week for each category)
    
  • Materials and advice on how to best use purchased products.
    • Course outlines using your materials within a particular course, year level or government curriculum structure. Teachers can see how the product can be built into a practical course within time constraints. Many US Texts provide this and much more through their Teacher's Edition.
    • Specific links to material that complements a specific product or chapter of a product. E.g. List the main headings for a product and provide links that complement parts of particular sections.
      For instance, the Victorian Curriculum and Standards Framework is highly likely to be available on the net soon. A text with specific links to activities within that publication would have a very significant marketing edge.
      
      Both these types of support are provided in US texts through the Teacher's Eddition. Development of such a resource on the Web would put any text at a very significant advantage over the competition. A printed edition would not be profitable in Australia given the low sales volume. A Web version could attract much of the attention and praise even as it was developed. Many contributions could be elicited at low cost from teachers actually using the texts in schools. Costs to MacMillan would mainly be in terms of payment to contributors, editorial supervision and Web site maintenance.
      
    • Links or information about schools and teachers using your products. This encourages links between schools using your products which should reinforce their choice. It also gives Web users the impression that a large number of schools are using your products.
      
• General Support. Making the site an attractive resource.
  
  • Provide full text resources which are copyright free. This is being done worldwide in relation to literary works from past authors. It is possible that it could be done with material that was easily converted (or currently available) in electronic format e.g. old texts etc.
  • Provide full text resources where copyright is fully owned and cheap. This would give a great impression of generosity. Teachers would value greatly the provision of older materials that they could use as the basis for new work. Not only exercises but books on mathematics history and applicatiojns would be appreciated greatly and would contribute very greatly to the international reognition of the site.
  • Provide full text resources of limited excerpts of quality materials, so that customers may be encouraged to purchase the full product. Similar concept to the software demonstration programs currently used so commonly. it would be a great way to get materials in use, so that teachers would hear the boast "guess where I got this !".

The Future

There are only two ways that I can envisage of providing on the Web material for which the publishers wished to retain effective copyright and thus revenue.

• Subscription Services. There are many information services now provided on the Web which require a subscription payment in advance. For instance, Britannica Encyclopedia provides access to its full text as well as yearbooks and related Web links for an annual subscription of about A$200.
  This may be a very lucrative mechanism for the publication of large and frequently updated information. In fact, as printing costs compare with electronic publication, it may become uncompetitive to publish most school textbooks in hard copy (see below). Experience in Web site management can be seen as a first step in exploring a new publishing media and in positioning a company to be able to respond to a changing market.
  This system need to have built in controls over a person who attempts to use software that systematically copies the whole of the web site. In the case of Britannica, this would take some time. Other sites may limit the amount of information available in a single visit, or each month etc.
  
• "Pay per View" Publishing. There are currently no facilities that I am aware of that allow use of Web services on a pay per view basis. There have been many articles recently on the imminent introduction of this service by Microsoft and others. This system would entail secure use of credit facilities so that a user could ring, for instance Britannica Online, and ask to make a single query. A fee would be electronically charged against an Web account of some sort.
  There has been great discussion in computer magazines about the huge range of sophisticated information services that are already developed, but which will not be released to the Web until this system is in place. This has the capacity to transform publishing (as well as international banking !) overnight.
  Text books (particularly maths) could easily be early targets for this form of publishing. The material is relatively stable world wide. The size and cost of the texts themselves is increasing. The demand for individual programs and courses could be met in part by selected use of pathways through a virtual textbook. etc.
  Publishing companies need to be in a position to enter this market or they may lose it. Publishing companies have a huge asset in terms of their imprint denoting a level of quality. The Web is well known as a place with no quality control whatsoever. Nevertheless, if publishers are not in a position to enter the market then they cannot succeed in it.

The best method of protecting the viability of both these business ideas is to choose to provide data that is:

• large i.e. the value lies in the quantity and not in any specific part. A person trying to copy it all would be detected
• fragmented i.e. the material does not flow in a single fixed pattern that someone can systematically copy.
• changing i.e. the material is being added to constantly. The user is dissuaded from copying large chunks because they might be changed for the better on the next visit. The user is encouraged to return to see what has been added. The structure may also be changed sometime to defeat attempts to copy sections regularly for republication.

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Footnotes:

• (1) Web: Term generally interchangeable with the "Internet" , the "Net" or the "World Wide Web" (WWW). Thousands of computers around the world are left operating 24 hrs a day to receive calls over the telephone lines and to respond to other computers by providing information on specific topics.
• (2) These computers are called "sites". Many of these computer systems are operated by non-profit organisations such as universities, semi-government and government authorities.
• (3) Many sites charge small fees for individuals to use their connection to reach other sites. Such sites are caller "service providers". Most service providers are now commercial organisations. A growing number of free information services are provided by commercial organisations. A small but growing number of information services are accessible only by a membership number requiring a periodic fee.
• (4) Individual Web "users" can connect to the web at any time by turning on their computer system (fitted with a piece of equipment called a "modem" and software called a "browser") and using a phone line to ring up the computer of a local service provider. From this site, they can reach any other site in the world without incurring any overseas telephone charges. They pay the local provider for the duration of their connection.
• (5) Browser software can be told to remember sites worth visiting again as "bookmarks". These sites can then be reached much more quickly, easily and frequently.
• (6) Web Users can also individually send and receive information (overwhelmingly text; usually pictures; very often software; less commonly sound and video due the large time taken for transmission). This is called electronic mail or "email". Users can send requests and receive information from any other individuals or sites.

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The Author: Stephen Digby, Bachelor of Science Degree (Monash University); Diploma in Education, (Victoria College), Graduate Diploma in Computer Education (Victoria College). Stephen has worked in primary, technical and high Schools in Victoria as a teacher, computer education, maths and science consultant for 16 years. His other career experiences include managing a Computer Education Teacher Training Centre, working as a writer for the Information Technology Study of the Victorian Certificate of Education, and teaching mathematics in the USA. He is currently Maths Co-ordinator of the Castlemaine Secondary College, Victoria.