GenDigital

Will The iPad Kill? Not So Much Initially, At Least Among Students

Last month, Apple unveiled its latest device to the world, the iPad. Apple is touting the "educational benefits" of the $499 device, but the real question is, will students respond with the same verve as they have with other Apple products in the past? Already a small Pennsylvania college, Seton Hill, announced that it will provide iPads to all of their full-time students next fall. With an enrollment of just over 2,000 students it's a start for the Apple machine, albeit it's not and Ohio State or Univ of Minnesota with 40,000 and 50,000 undergrads.

Clearly Apple has the education market in mind with the iPad as partnerships have also been trickling out with leading textbook publishers including Macmillan and McGraw Hill, among others. The basic concept is that students, as tech savvy as they are, will be more comfortable and adept in consuming their academic material via a multi-touch interactive e-reader device like the iPad as opposed to a more cumbersome (and heavy) 500 page textbook.

Besides the interactive e-reader capabilities, the iPad is really nothing more than oversized version of the already wildly popular iTouch. So, in other words, beyond the supposed convenience of an e-reader device, and a fairly pricey one at that, do students really desire having one more device that already offers many of the same features and functionality they're well accustomed to? The initial vote from our college student panelists is a resounding nay.

As much buzz as the broader e-reader market is receiving, when it comes to the actual end user level of students, awareness, let alone interest is quite weak. And, as can be expected, when you throw in a price tag of $499 (plus data plan costs) interest and intent among students drops even further.

Based on this initial feedback, the strategy to drive immediate adoption would be an institutional type sales approach where Apple would sell iPads in bulk to specific colleges and universities. We suspect the schools would then have to pass along the costs through various student access and tech fees. That said, other than the super tech schools like MIT and Stanford, it's pretty unlikely to see major state-funded institutions sign on quickly (fall 2010) as many are still very much struggling with budget and capital expenditure problems of their own. Chances are, the last thing they want to do is add on one more fee for their students.

Coming Soon: Comic Book Series For Teen Girls

From what we have been seeing tracking teens and tweens over the past year, comic books have made a nice little run up in the ladder in overall popularity and buzz. We attribute some of the popularity to the comic book extension of the The O.C., which was at one point earlier this year a Top Ten television show among all teens and a Top 3 show among teen females. Based on the success, D.C. Comics, the giant comic book publisher owned by Time Warner, plans to introduce a teen female focused comic book imprint called MINX whose first series called "The Plain Janes" will launch in May 2007.

A Healthy Lifestyle Book Written By a College Student, For College Students

A Princeton University junior might have what it takes to end up on the New York Times bestseller list for college students, if there were such a thing (may be there should be?). Daphne Oz, the aforementioned Princeton student, is the publisher of the aptly named "Dorm Room Diet," a neatly written eight step guide for a more healthy collegiate lifestyle. The book is set up into eight steps focused on a healthier lifestyle for college students. Her eight steps look at inspiration, making short-term achievable goals, information about healthy food/beverage choices, how to get started with a healthier active lifestyle, avoiding some of the common collegiate pitfalls (the average college students goes out 5.2 nights per week) with eating smartly, some relatively easy-to-do exercises, vitamins and supplements. She concludes by touching on some more esoteric issues like happiness and how mediation, aromatherapy and other alternative methods can bolster the whole notion of an active, healthy collegiate lifestyle. How many times have I mentioned the whole healthy/active lifestyle trend among college students in the past three months? Three, four, probably at least five times. Not only does this book validate the trend, but given her Amazon sales rank within the top 10,000 and the book has only been out for a month, doesn't hurt either.

Publisher Of Teen Fiction Under Siege

The New York Times ran a story yesterday about a product placement relationship between book publisher Perseus and Procter & Gamble's Cover Girl brand of cosmetics. Apparently, one consumer watchdog group, Commercial Alert, was none to happy about the relationship. The group sent an email to 305 editors yesterday asking them not to review the book called "Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233," and to treat it like an advertisement instead of a novel. Just to be clear here, today's New York Post reports that no money exchanged hands between the book publisher and P&G, but the book's authors did agree to alter the writing to mention Cover Girl's lip gloss by name. In exchange for the mention, P&G agreed to promote the novel on its Beinggirl teen web site, which I posted about in the past. In today's blurred world of branded entertainment you can't tell me this is the first teen targeted novel that featured product placements. After all this is a work of fiction, not some book about American history. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is considering Gen Y is constantly bombarded with marketing messages left and right. I am just glad to see that they are still reading quite frankly given of all of the other media distractions around them.

Marketing Teen Novels Gets Serious

For an industry I rarely post about sans Kaavya Viswanathan, the much publicized Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarism in her first novel, today's NY Post has a pretty good piece about the aggressive marketing tactics of St. Martin's Press. The publisher plans to release a novel aimed at teen readers called "Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn." The publisher has used a wide variety of tactics to create buzz for the upcoming release including a word of mouth marketing program, an upcoming promotional appearance on MTV and a partnership with record label Def Jam. What I find somewhat surprising (and almost refreshing quite frankly) is the fact publishing traditional books aimed at teens clearly remains a big business despite the fact that Gen Y is bombarded with digital entertainment and other technological nuances all around them 24/7.

A Second Case of Plagiarism For Harvard Sophomore

  A reader called into the New York Times yesterday to alert them to new similarities between Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswananthan's teen book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" (which was pulled from shelves after the first plagiarism accusation came out last week)and another book written by a British author. Much like the first story published last week, the passages are strikingly similar. May be if one passage (may be even to) had some similarities, we could call it just a coincidence and leave it at that. But, for this young woman who is already under the microscope, three similar passages will most likely end her writing career at the age of 19. The spokesperson for Alloy Entertainment, the book packager that helped Kaavya develop the book (or may be even wrote it for that matter, that is the rumor) declined to comment...gee, I wonder why?