The text books industry India will be impacted by the digital revolution with in a period of five years or so. The impact of digital revolution is evident from the trend that is going on in countries such as US.

E-books across the world

The forecasts says that the E-books market will be worth USD 12.7 billion in 2013 with a market share of 16 per cent. In 2010 the E-book market was worth USD 3.9 billion with a market share of 5 per cent. The statistics from Amazon observes that the sales of E-books have outperformed the sales of physical books in the United States and the United Kingdom. USD 1.5 billion was spent on E-books by the US readers in 2010, thus demonstrating a growth of 175 per cent from 2009. The United States still is the largest market in the E-books segment with 67 per cent of the E-books being sold in the US in 2010. However, with close to 9 per cent economic growth and the adoption of advanced communication technologies, India will soon become a profitable market for the E-book industry.

Apple iBooks

The entry of Apple into the education space has resulted in a positive outcome. Statistics shows that the iBooks 2 launched by Apple made a huge impact in the market with 350,000 E-books being sold with in three days of launch. Even though iBooks 2 and iBooks Author are not yet introduced in the Indian market, independent developers operating in the education domain have already targeted the digitized space.

Publishers in India

With the strong capabilities in the field of Information technology, the publishers in India are preparing to explore the opportunities in the digital publishing space. India is home to outsourcing service providers who caters to 60 per cent of the publishing needs across the world. It is estimated that the outsourced publishing services to India will be worth USD 1.2 billion in 2012.

Even with the required competencies in hand, the publishers in India were reluctant to take major steps in the digital space. Inadequate knowledge about the various options that are available, the features with different platforms and inadequate capabilities to process information in-house are the major barriers in the road to digital space.

In India the publishing space is huge and more over the industry is highly scattered. There are more than 18,000 publishers in India who operate in 24 different languages including English. In the case of small publishing firms, getting into the digital space requires huge investments both in terms of time and money. Such firms do not have any idea when they will break even with such kind of huge investment. They will have to bring in changes in their agreements; will have to go for advice from experts, discussions with others in the industry; which will be a difficult task for them. They will also have to work on the pricing models. In India Text books are priced low between USD 1 to USD 1.5.

The early adopters in India

There are many firms in India who have come a long way in this regard. For instance, Attano, a firm headquartered in Bangalore has introduced a technology which will digitize educational text into an interactive E-book with in 60 minutes. Even though the company is in the beta stage, it has come forward to exploit the huge potential in the digital space in India. The firm was in the process of developing this technology for the past two years. The developers claim that their technology will offer the readers the same experience as of reading a text book. They say that this will be made possible with the help of flow charts and graphs. The differentiating factor of this technology is the compatibility of the software with various hardware platforms such as Android, Mobile devices or even the personal computers.

Indian market at infancy

Even though the iBook 2 introduced by Apple has become a hit in the United States; the situation in India is different. The digitization of education space in India is still at the infant stage. The ministry of Human Resource and Development has come up with Aakash, in order to give students access to digital content.

Institutions in the way of digitization

There are many schools in India who have started or are planning to digitize the curriculum. For instance, Universal Education Group has digitized a major part of the curriculum. The curriculum is developed on behalf of the guidelines provided by ICSE. But the ICSE text books available on the market are all in the print form. They have not yet been digitized. The curriculum team of UEG is working on iBooks Author Platform to find how they can digitize study content to iPad.

Since there are very few publishers in the education space in India, it is really difficult to digitize the textbooks with copyrights. In the case of content that is developed in-house, it is possible to digitize them with established platforms.

However few schools in India are planning to make use of iBooks from the next academic year onwards. This includes Billabong High International School and even UEG. Developers in the education space have started to team up education institutions to develop digital contents in their institutions, which will be interactive in nature.

There are firms in India which are willing to offer assistance in converting the hard copies into soft copies. This ill make the task of most of the publishers easy.

Mobile communication

The increasing adoption of smart phones, tablets and other communication devices is certainly going to change the publishing space in India with more and more developments in this field. The total sale of tablets in India is expected to cross 200,000 in 2011, with more than 75 new one expected to be introduced into the market in 2012.

With the increased adoption of E-books in the field of education, the traditional text books in print form will lose its market share. The players in this domain will have to undergo tremendous changes from its legacy form to tide over the competition. This is the same in the case of others in the publishing space. Those who resist change will be out of the game as digitized form will be convenient for the users rather than carrying a pack of books.