The second in a series of interviews with notable people in publishing: Carl Tyson, President, CEO and Director of Thinkwell, a leading provider of technology-based textbooks; www.thinkwell.com/ Carl was formerly president of the college divisions of McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Brace. Barista: What is your perspective on the industry today? You have been in college publishing for over 30 years, first with traditional publishers and now with a more entrepreneurial content provider Carl: I believe that textbook publishers do a wonderful job. The textbook is the best value for the money one can find. Think about everything that goes into a biology book--hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in content, art, and support materials. Publishers often get a bad rap because of price, but with a text the student gets a complete education from one source. While publishers have become better and better at producing books, the problem is that no one at a big publisher says, ”We want you to innovate and change the world.” It is all about the bottom line. There are many smart people in publishing who gave me quick lessons in finance. One day I noticed that Netscape, with not much more than a browser, had higher capitalization than did Delta Airlines. I could see that the world was moving to the web. Barista: How did you get to Thinkwell? Carl: Amy Bryant and Dan Heath, the founders, hired me 10 years ago. Their idea was to use the power of technology to deliver world-class instruction to students at home. It is all about making a student’s life better by enabling that student to learn faster. Most college profs work hard to do a good job of teaching and empowering students, and our programs help both students and professors achieve their goals. Barista: How has your model evolved over the years? Carl: It started as a tutoring model that has moved to more of a text model—a next-generation textbook. Our online videos provide instruction when the student needs it. Practice exercises after each lesson give students immediate feedback, and the included notes help them prepare for tests. Barista: How much of your business comes from college adoptions? Carl: Probably 95% of our business comes from adoptions. Our courses are used on about 450 campuses. Many professors use the videos as a supplement to their lectures, although some use them as core material. There are a lot of colleges and universities using the courses in distance learning programs. But we are increasingly selling direct to students from our website. Barista: What percentage of your content is delivered online vs. on CD or DVD and how do you price? Carl: We deliver 99% via the Internet. We only sell CDs to people who don’t have the bandwidth to get the course online. Our price for a 12- month course subscription is competitive with textbook pricing. Barista: Have you been involved in the course redesign projects that seem to be proliferating these days? Carl: No, but, from what I have read, our products seem to incorporate many of the principles of course redesign. Barista: It is said that college publishing is a recession-proof industry. Do you think this will be the case in the current recession? Carl: People must have money to go back to school for retraining and the problem is that student loans are more difficult and expensive to get now. But one good sign is that enrollment at Austin Community College is up over 13% this semester, after an almost 7% increase in the fall. Thinkwell had a good year last year and this year has started off well for us, too. www.thinkwell.com/ Learn more about the Thinkwell team: http://www.thinkwell.com/main/about