As the world of higher education continues to grapple with distance learning and its effect upon educational publishers (see article), textbook publishers, while sizing up the online onslaught, are protecting their flanks with a variety of forays into the consumer market at the elementary and high-school levels:
• Dan Farley, President of Harcourt Trade, is working to bring the content of the various subsidiaries of Harcourt Education to the consumer market. One of the first fruits of this initiative is a deal with Barnes & Noble Publishing’s Sparknotes to repurpose some of Steck-Vaughn’s educational material for the consumer market. It will create a series of workbooks that will be published by Sparknotes’ younger sibling, Flashkids (aimed at the K-8 age group), beginning in June 2004. Sparknotes is “refreshing and augmenting” S-V’s material and will sell it exclusively through Barnes & Noble.
• Riverdeep Inc., which is one of the largest educational software producers (it owns Edmark, Broderbund, and Learning Company), recently launched Learning Company Books, which will publish and distribute (through CDS) workbooks based on their successful Reader Rabbit software and ClueFinders program. Vivian Antonangeli, who had been Publisher of Reader’s Digest Children’s Books, is its Director of Retail Sales.
• When McGraw-Hill bought Tribune Education, they lost no time in using its assets — including licenses and authors — to develop workbooks and activity books. Vince Douglas, who had been co-founder of Landoll, took over as President of the renamed McGraw-Hill Children’s Publishing, which nevertheless remains a tiny part of McGraw-Hill Education’s $2.35 billion empire.
• Pearson’s Marjorie Scardino bought Dorling Kindersley with one objective of repurposing its photo and art archive for its education market. But Pearson has moved into the edutainment market, with Family Education Network, a website that combines educational materials with consumer offerings, and traditional books with downloadable POD titles.
