ELT Review:The publishing industry has changed dramatically and e-publishing has become more and more popular. What has Cambridge University Press done in the field of e-publishing?
Stephen Bourne: For a long time, Cambridge University Press has believed that the shift to digital publishing was inevitable. The only questions were when and how quickly. So we’ve been ‘going digital’ since about 1997, and were well prepared when the move started to happen. We now know without any doubt that e-books have ‘taken off’ in the USA, and that libraries worldwide are keen to invest in digital feeds of our Cambridge Books Online and Cambridge Journals Online products. Alongside them, we have built award-winning educational products, such as our Race to Learn software, which we built in collaboration with Hitachi Software; our Touchstone Online blended service for teaching English is achieving big orders; and our Cambridge Library Collection is demonstrating how digital printing machines can solve the problem of immediate delivery without the need to hold stocks of books – by printing on demand.
ELT Review:Does Cambridge University Press have any plan of collaborating with Chinese publishers on e-publishing?
Stephen Bourne: Cambridge will definitely be collaborating with Chinese publishers as regards e-products, as that will be the dominant form of publishing of academic and educational products in the future. And we’re very pragmatic about the reality that China is a very big and different market, so the best business strategy for us is to work with Chinese publishers, rather than compete with them. They understand the market better than we do – and they always will – and they have the capacity to serve this large geographic marketplace.
ELT Review: Will digital books take the place of traditional books in the future?
Stephen Bourne: Yes, for sure. But there will always be a place for printed books, for three reasons. First, people like to collect books, if only to fill their library shelves or to decorate the walls in their house. Digital screens could be a different art-form, but will not please everyone. Second, people like to feel paper and to turn the pages in books. Will electronic devices ever be as satisfying? And finally, people like to look at images in a way that digital screens do not permit now, and perhaps never will. Of course, one can argue that digitization enables one to do so much more with pictures, but many people will still choose the physical impression.
出版商应提供教育解决方案
Terry Nealon（特瑞尼伦）
霍顿米夫林哈考特集团
全球国际业务常务副总裁
ELT Review: How do you see China’s education e-publishing market?
Terry Nealon:The global education market, especially in China, is growing exponentially due to consumer demand. Today’s student/classroom demands the latest innovation and the deepest, most accessible content and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is working with educators across the globe to continue to enhance its technology-based content, curriculum and instructional tools to raise learning to a new level.
ELT Review: What challenges will e-publishing encounter in the near future around the world?
Terry Nealon:Currently, the most valuable education innovation is that which helps teachers individualize instruction and/or measure and track students’ achievement. For this reason, publishers have begun developing data management platforms that accommodate all stakeholders within the interactive education community including teachers, students, parents and administrators. These platforms enable all parties to access the same data matrix, allowing them to compare and collaborate among each other to help improve students’ and teachers’ individual and collective performance.
ELT Review:As the publishing industry is driven more and more by technology, how does HMH provide value-added products to the education market?
Terry Nealon:HMH is leading the way with innovative solutions to the challenges facing education today—our technology solutions are designed to connect teachers, administrators, parents and students to create dynamic, interactive communities. The Pinpoint Integrated Education Suite brings together all the elements of a school’s technology systems into a single fully customizable platform; the Learning Village offers a powerful curriculum management solution that connects educators to best practices, instructional strategies, lesson plans, and resources, and enables measurable student achievement from one central portal. HMH, in cooperation with local partners, has created localized, tailor-made education solutions for our customers.
