Cobb Publishing 2014 Case Study: 7 Videos

The paper 3 case study for May and November 2014 (ITGS HL only) revolves around Cobb Publishing, a small company that is looking to improve its business in several areas, including e-book publishing and self-publishing. For paper 3 students need to conduct a variety of secondary and primary research, which they must then reference in the exam (particularly in the longer answer questions). Here are 7 videos related to different areas of the case study:

Lines 30-55 in the case study PDF explain how the e-book industry is changing, and one of the key changes is the move towards cloud based platforms which can offer features such as device synchronization. This short video introduces features of the Google eBooks platform. Although not as popular as other e-book platforms, many of the features and benefits listed here apply to other cloud-based e-book systems too.

This video examiners some of the changes in the book industry in the last few years and asks customers and readers what they think about e-books compared to printed books. This is important for the case study as Cobb Publishing want to understand more about their customers (perhaps using a data driven approach where data is collected from e-book readers) to inform their business decisions.

We know from line 16 of the case study booklet that more writers are self-publishing, and line 76 explains that Cobb Publishing want to invest more in this marketplace. Although only very short, this video talks about Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program (KDP), one of the most well known self-publishing platforms for e-books. The video mentions several key benefits of self-publishing and e-book publishing which make good discussion points for further classroom investigation.

What is Kindle Direct Publishing? goes into greater detail about the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program, explaining how the process works from writing to publishing and marketing. The video also talks about KDP’s analytics data, which we know from the case study booklet (lines 70+) is an area that Cobb Publishing want to examine, albeit with a concern about reader privacy.

The case study booklet says that more readers are looking for interactive material in their e-books (lines 15 and 42), and that Cobb Publishing is considering how to enter this market.’What is an Enhanced E-Book’ gives several examples of different books and different types of enhancements that can be included – including external links and videos. These enhancements are quite different to the ones shown in “The Question” (below), showing how enhancements can be important for many different genres or audiences.

This is another example of many different types of interactive and enhanced e-books, including examples in education. Combined with the video above and the video below, this should give ITGS students a good list of features that might be used by Cobb Publishing to enhance e-books.

This video is a marketing video, but it is a great example of the types of features that interactive e-books (also called enhanced e-books) can have. The video clearly shows different types of interaction, narration, and animation as well as other features.