@Iltfiat they own digital (and foreign translation) copyright. That's always the deal - you exchange their imprimatur for control of the content. That said, I have a lot of content and could re-create much of the text & images and steer clear (enough) of copyright issues. But, in this case as I guess almost always, that is simply not worth the effort. A better model for them would be to allow this bifurcated approach where authors can re-purpose content for free or cheap distribution with their blessing on the hope that it drives sales of the premium product, i.e. the fermium model. Easy to use tools like iBooks Author could actually allow this. Hope they get it :)
Any physicians or residents going to create their own iBook textbook?
(11 posts) (6 voices)- Posted 3 months ago #
One of the cool things with the launch of the iBooks is iBooks Author -- enabling people with basic computer skills to create and sell their own textbooks. I think this is huge for the medical community in two main ways:
1) We're often held hostage by publishers who make it difficult to publish our own books. And as physicians we have a good fund of knowledge ourselves, but it isn't exactly the easiest thing to publish a textbook.
2) Medical content is updating so quickly, and by the time many of the medical texts we use come to time of publication, much of the content is already outdated. Obviously, the alternative is reading literature straight from PubMed, but unfortunately, keeping a massive stash of PDF files isn't the most ideal thing either.
I think iBook Author will lead to a massive amount of medical professionals publishing texts, at least relative to what exists today.
What do you guys think?
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iPad 2, Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4sPosted 3 months ago #-
I was just thinking about doing that for my upcoming board exam tonight. However, it would be a "personal" textbook, to share with my colleagues, but not to publish "publicly". The main reason for that is the copyright issue; it gets crazy as soon as one start digging into that i.e. TNM staging, ACLS algorithms are copyrighted.
I agree with you though. It brings more power into the hands of smaller publishers, similar to what the AppStore did for the small developers back in 2008. Can't wait to see what the community will come up with!
iPhone 4S, iPad, Nexus S
co-founder Messil (www.messil.com)
@marckemil on TwitterPosted 3 months ago #Hi Iltifat,
I think you're right, there will be many medical texts published is way. I can also see it being used by medical education units in hospitals. Being able to pull their media content into a single format is a big plus. So you can have the protocol for, say, IVC placement with an embedded video of the procedure and then MCQs to reinforce the knowledge. And it will be able to be done in house due to the fact it's simple software to use.
Twitter: @corbetron
iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPod touch 4Posted 3 months ago #I agree with what everyone else has said. I for one am very keen on writing something (no idea what yet). I particularly like the idea of making personal notes. Could be a really good way to combine media into a simple format although as previously pointed out, Copyright issues have the potential to be a real pain if you decide to publicly distribute your book.
I also think we will see universities and med schools taking advantage (thats the dream anyway). My med school has massive handbooks which it distributes to us anyway. I can't see it being too much effort to transfer that data across to the iBook format. I do think that institutions may need quite a lot of financial and technical support to do this.
Part of the problem I see with physicians writing their own textbooks for distribution is the classic problem in medical literature. How do you know the information you are reading is reliable? ie If I see you book in the iBookstore, how do I know you have the latest up to date information?
Posted 3 months ago #Tom, I think you've hit on an extremely important problem in the world of small/self publishing. Large publishers have a reputation to protect, and they employ an army of editors and fact-checkers to insure their books uphold internal standards. There is no way of knowing if a self-published iBook is a reliable source of information.
But maybe this is going back to the Thomas Paine pamphlet model -- everyone has a voice, and readers themselves make the decision about what is trustworthy. I'm hopeful that with new, easy distribution tools like iBooks we may see the birth of the "e-pamphlet" -- a thorough but subjective take on an interesting subject.
Then, if fact checking and editing are important to you, you buy a real textbook from a big publisher. If the latest updates and a personal touch are more important, you find an e-pamphlet that suits. In a world of blogs, we know that journalism has an both professional and amateur branches, and we know (usually) how to tell the difference. iBooks just brings that distinction to the world of textbooks.
Posted 3 months ago #An interesting article in WIRED about FLOW, an open source university developed platform... Peer review is part of their plan.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/flow-digital-textbooks/
There are also other open source projects for iOS such as the Victorian Museum Field Guide - which could be easily adapted to medical uses:
http://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/mv-field-guide-app/
Go to it!
Posted 3 months ago #@corbetron - thanks for the link, interesting reading. Also check out Flat World Knowledge (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/), a very interesting publisher that bills itself "the world's largest publisher of free and open college textbooks. "
The e-book does present a challenge for publishers. Most textbooks are not great businesses, as the volumes are small. The journals are better in this respect, as print advertising prices still remain high. Thus the proliferation of journals.
However, from the reader's and author's perspective, an interactive text can be a dramatic pedagogical improvement, aside from the obvious advantages in portability and convenience. When I finished my textbook (http://amzn.to/xxQJQl), I immediately went back to my publisher and suggested we put out an interactive app to teach the principles discussed in the book. I even drafted a proposal what this might look like - touch fields inside images to ask readers what the important finding was on radiographs, etc.
What I got back was .... crickets. On follow up, what I found out is that the app model didn't work out so hot for them. The app prices were laughable and a chunk of that went to the middleman (read: Modality). And only a few apps could charge a commanding enough price to make it worthwhile, these being the big standard texts.
So, it makes sense for Apple and others to target iBooks at the K-12 and college textbook market where the volumes could make it economically viable. I am still hoping to see the big publishing houses bring out affordable e-books of the kind of texts that practicing physicians would actually use. The value of their reputation is still very important to the potential reader but I don't know how the economics will work for them.
Posted 3 months ago #@Felasfa, how difficult would it be for you to creat your own interactive textbook based on the content you already have? What type of copyright stuff would you have to worry about?
Posted 3 months ago #Hey guys. Even though some textbooks are "open source" doesn't necessarily means that someone can reproduce it and give it away (for free). There are licensing issues with open source stuff, and it doesn't necessarily fit with Apple's terms; VLC (a popular open source project) for iOS was pulled from the AppStore because of that reason:
http://9to5mac.com/2011/01/07/vlc-for-ios-removed-from-the-app-store/
@Felasfa : I can understand your "frustration"; publishers are comfortable in their little world of hard copy paper textbooks.
Posted 3 months ago #@Iltfiat they own digital (and foreign translation) copyright. That's always the deal - you exchange their imprimatur for control of the content. That said, I have a lot of content and could re-create much of the text & images and steer clear (enough) of copyright issues. But, in this case as I guess almost always, that is simply not worth the effort. A better model for them would be to allow this bifurcated approach where authors can re-purpose content for free or cheap distribution with their blessing on the hope that it drives sales of the premium product, i.e. the fermium model. Easy to use tools like iBooks Author could actually allow this. Hope they get it :)
Posted 3 months ago #
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