E-textbooks deserve a second try

When the annual Hong Kong Book Fair opened on Wednesday, the same old question was posed: Is the e-book market encroaching further on the printed book market? The answer would become clearer by the end of the week-long event but according to some foreign studies, the e-book market seems to be expanding much slower than expected.

According to last year's figures from the Pew Research Center in the United States, the main consumer market of e-books today, the US citizens' habit of reading printed books has not waned further since 2012. Even more surprising is that many young people said they preferred to read printed books because they wanted to hold the product in their hands.

Hong Kong's e-book market is still relatively backward. Writers have complained about low sales volumes for their e-publications, while publishers are unwilling to invest resources into developing e-books because of the small size of the local market.

But how fast the e-book market could grow is a matter for the publication industry. Whether you want to read a printed book in your hand or an e-book through a tablet computer or even smartphone is your own choice. What concerns the public is whether we should develop e-textbooks for our children, which has more or less become a global trend. E-textbooks have the advantage, among others, of being able to tie in with multimedia technology to help students learn more effectively and interactively.

In 2012 and 2013, the special administrative region government launched the E-Textbook Market Development Scheme (EMADS), which was meant to encourage publishers to develop quality e-textbooks for our school children. But the scheme was abandoned last year because of a lukewarm response from publishers and, more importantly, the education sector.

E-textbook developers participating in the scheme deplored the intense competition, and schools did not have sufficient incentive to change to e-textbooks. Parents did not have enough confidence in the new technology.

In order to ensure our young generation would not miss out on the latest technology in education, the new administration should draw a lesson from the EMADS and consider re-launching the e-textbook program with more inducement to both publishers and schools. The latter's willingness to use e-textbooks, for instance, should be linked to resource allocation. In addition, a special body should be set up to ensure the quality of the e-textbooks produced - not just digitizing printed contents - and to keep the development costs at low and competitive levels.

We must ensure that our young generation is given the quality education necessary to sustain Hong Kong's competitiveness and realize the transformation of our economy into a knowledge-based one.

(HK Edition 07/20/2017 page8)