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History Textbooks in the Digital Age
Tessa Harvey, History Publisher, Wiley-Blackwell
1. Introduction:
Thank you to the organisers for inviting me to participate today. I’m here to share some thoughts on
the changing landscape for History textbooks as a publisher. My experience is based on 15 years at
Wiley-Blackwell, formerly Blackwell Publishing, where I have been involved in developing a number
of subject lists, but primarily as Publisher for History.
2. What Future?
I believe History textbooks have a vital job to do in the digital age. But I see that job as slightly
different from before. Where in the past students might have struggled to get information about a
subject, today the difficulty is that there is an over-supply of information, but of variable quality.
A good History textbook will continue to provide a trusted starting point in the study of an historical
period or topic. Indeed I believe its role will become even more significant over time.
In future, the textbook will provide increasing pedagogical support to students by way of dynamic
links and additional online information. It will connect the student reader to more detailed research
literature on the one hand, and the more general, public discussion of an historical event or debate
on the other.
To explain why I think this, let me step back to talk about the challenges publishers are facing in the
digital age, and how they are responding…
3. What are the key challenges for History textbook publishers in the digital age?
The reasons publishers moved into textbook publishing during the 1990s is fairly well-documented.
To a large extent it was a shift forced on academic publishers by the collapse of sales from
traditional print monographs. The attractions of the textbook market remain strong but there are
all sorts of new challenges for textbook publishers today:

The publishing field has become increasingly competitive. There are a greater number of
publishers crowding into the textbook market, competing for authors and students’ limited
money.

There are other new sources of competition to contend with too. One very obvious
challenge is the increasingly professionalized used book market which whilst providing a
valuable service to impoverished students, threatens the ongoing revenues of textbook
authors and publishers after the first year or so of publication.

The bookselling chain is in a great state of flux. Traditional bricks and mortar bookshops
have been suffering for many years. Newcomers like Amazon are having a revolutionary
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effect on patterns of student buying. Publishers need to organise their sales teams to
respond to the changing bookselling landscape.

Online developments are transforming the way people want to consume information.
Whilst the printed book is still the preferred choice for ‘cover-to-cover’ reading, generations
of new instructors and their students are much more comfortable accessing information
online. Free online resources such as Wikipedia challenge traditional publishers to think
afresh about the way they can expect to generate income from creating and disseminating
content.

Publishers need to make major investments in technology to support new forms of
publication and many smaller presses struggle to find the resources to compete. This need
for ‘scale’ has driven further consolidation in the industry in recent years. There are all sorts
of recent examples of this in the History publishing field [from Routledge’s purchase by
Taylor and Francis in 1997, and Taylor and Francis’s subsequent acquisition by Informa in
2004; to Wiley’s take over of Blackwell in 2007]. Suffice to say, this trend of consolidation is
likely to continue.
In short, the drive to respond to digital changes is having a transformative effect on the textbook
publishing industry. We now also have to weather the storm of the global economic downturn.
4. What developments have there been so far?
There have already been a number of important responses to the digital opportunities for textbook
publishing and signs of future change:
Production:
Many publishers now use digital technology in their production operations. Digital production is
cheaper and enables shorter print runs, including print-on-demand. With digital technology, books
can remain commercially available (‘in print’) in perpetuity.
Whilst digital printing has largely been an enhancement to the traditional printed book model, there
are now also signs that the digital storage of content is enabling publishers to develop new models
for book publishing. Content is being packaged and disseminated in new ways. Recent examples in
Humanities book publishing include Oxford Scholarship Online (which contains OUP’s scholarly
output) and Blackwell Reference Online (which comprises Wiley-Blackwell’s reference content for
the Humanities and Social Sciences). In February this year, Palgrave announced the launch of its
online books platform, Palgrave Connect.
Marketing and Sales:
Related to these developments in the technology are new Marketing and Sales opportunities for
books. There are an increasing range of formats and customers for us to sell our online content. In
addition to selling electronic versions of books directly off their online-books platform, publishers
can also use third party e-book vendors (Ebrary; NetLibrary) and, of course, Amazon, which now
offers online access to books through its Amazon Upgrade operation.
It is important to say that so far these developments have been focussed in the Humanities on
scholarly and reference publishing. tho’ it seems more than likely that they will be extended to
textbooks in time.
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So: if the digital technology is there, or thereabouts, how will it change the way authors and
publishers conceive textbooks in the first place?
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5. What new publishing models can we envisage for textbooks in an online environment?
First of all, the digital age has not seen the end of the printed textbook. In History, in particular, I
believe the hard copy course book will endure longer than in other fields outside the Humanities but
increasingly I see it being offered as part of a package of learning materials designed for students.
Enhancing existing print textbooks
I see us investing more time and energy in making our existing print course-books work better as
teaching texts for students growing up in the digital age. For books with significant potential as
classroom texts, publishers have increasingly moved away from selecting authors on the basis of
their scholarship alone, to a combination of scholarly credentials and teaching experience.
The best authors know how to integrate the best of their teaching practice into these kinds of
History books, responding to changes in the way students consume information. Explaining the
purpose of the book, breaking up the text with sub-headings: it isn’t rocket science. But writing
History textbooks, like writing any kind of book designed for teaching purposes, needs to be
approached in a way that encourages students’ active learning. And it’s worth saying, too, that
whilst the term ‘textbook’ can conjure up something bland and derivative, in History in particular,
there is an important place for the challenging interpretation or strong authorial ‘voice’.
In design terms, there are all sorts of ways publishers are developing textbooks to be more userfriendly. It’s a question of degree: I don’t have the impression that the History community
necessarily wants its course books to look like the kind of textbooks we publish for the Accountancy
or Psychology market. But there are certainly design features we can adapt to enhance the learning
experience for students whilst remaining appropriate to the discipline.
Online possibilities
There are also now opportunities to think about online material to fit around the printed book.
We already offer authors the chance to provide online supplements to support their print textbooks.
These can take the form of simple add-ons that might previously have been offered in appendices to
the printed book – additional timelines; a glossary of terms and so forth. In the case of one recent
book on the Tudors and Stuarts we posted an additional chapter covering the period 1399-1485 to
help those whose courses started earlier than the majority who began in the late fifteenth century.
This chapter ‘Zero’ is available as a free downloadable PDF on our standard web page. For only a
little more trouble, we can now provide the technology to operate simple revision quizzes, again via
our standard website.
Going forward, I see considerable potential for this online material working alongside the main print
textbook. Whether it’s in providing dynamic links to key journal articles with more detailed
commentary, offering annotated links to sources, presenting downloadable media clips, animations,
or featuring regularly updated connections to relevant websites, blogs, wiki entries, the textbook
becomes students’ trusted point of access to a new subject.
Initially I anticipate that these components will be developed as a useful way of differentiating from
our competitors, and then increasingly as a necessary component of the textbook package.
Certainly in areas such as Psychology, where the market is extremely competitive and the number of
students and potential revenues very high, publishers are required to offer instructors all kinds of
electronic supplements to respond to teachers’ needs and ensure their textbooks are considered for
adoption. The online content is a condition of entry to the market.
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For some of our largest courses, we’ve developed WileyPLUS which is a sophisticated course
management system. This embeds the textbook within a suite of teaching and learning materials.
The instructor gets help preparing and managing the course, marking homework and so forth.
Students choose to read the textbook in print or online, and via a password protected website they
have access to a raft of pedagogical features and class assignments.
It is through developments in publishing fields like Psychology and Business that we have created
these ways of using the new technology to support our publications. But there is a cost to
experimentation. At present it’s not clear what value the History community places on the online
material we can provide. As a publisher working within the disciplines of a commercial press, I have
to be sure I can justify the additional cost of production to create new features. For the most part, I
try to observe what is happening in other lists that demand more of these online innovations, and
then, when they become routine there, I can incorporate them into my everyday discussions with
History authors. So whilst I haven’t yet requested an online re-enactment of the Battle of Bosworth,
when I need it, I know who to ask in our Technology team.
This is the way I see content developing. I also anticipate changes in the medium of delivery. The
technology exists to deliver online-only editions of our textbooks [Wiley Desktop Editions] and in
time History textbooks may well be offered in an online format, in addition to the print edition or
online only. In that format, links to websites, other online content owned by the publisher (or even
licensed to the reader’s host institution) would become dynamic, enabling the reader to use the
book as a portal, an entry point, to an integrated electronic learning environment.
I can also envisage a scenario where instructors may be able to create their own online packages of a
publisher’s material, selecting an online textbook to be used by students in conjunction with online
reference works and key articles from a journal [Wiley Custom Select] . Such a package might be sold
on site licence to the instructor’s institution enabling students to access it for the duration of their
course.
6. So, what should our priorities be in developing History textbooks within this changing
environment?
There are lots of possibilities for History textbooks in the digital age: some immediately within our
grasp and others a little further ahead.
Whether in print or online edition, the textbook is becoming the core element of an integrated
package of learning materials, creating a vital bridge to online source materials, secondary scholarly
literature as well as to wider public debate on topics of historical interest. As a means of navigating
an increasing array of information in the digital age, a good textbook will have a more important role
than ever before.
Some things aren’t likely to change in all this. As a publisher of History textbooks looking to develop
my programme for the digital age, I still expect to spend most of my time and energy recruiting the
best possible authors to write the textbooks I want to publish.
Whatever the medium of delivery, I will continue to rely on the skills of my authors as passionate
communicators; as writers who know how to make the past come alive in the stories they tell; as
scholars who can incorporate the latest intellectual developments into their thinking; as teachers
who understand how their students learn; and as professionals who can write to length and on time!