The New York Times reports on the introduction by Macmillan of DynamicBooks.

Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.

I have in a previous blog post, just before the release of Apple’s iPad discussed Sports Illustrated’s concept of a digital magazine. Current e-Books are either very much plain text with simple diagrams (designed to be read on e-Book Readers) or can only be accessed through a browser (such as Ebrary).

Since seeing the iPad, and having talked about e-Books in the past, I can see future e-Books being more than text, with animated diagrams, video clips. DynamicBooks allows practitioners even more control in these new e-Books.

Interesting to note that:

The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks.

This may mean that there will be a first choice for many practitioners and learners.