Was McGraw-Hill omitted from the iPad announcement?

I heard McGraw this morning on Bloomberg radio and he admitted his gaffe to Tom Keene. He's apparently so out of touch with his employees that he wasn't aware he was divulging trade secrets.

Maybe has something to do with this: http://getinkling.com/ .

I ordered books for 10 years and the book industry is a wild and confusing moving target of conglomerates always reconglomerating.

Also not mentioned were Random House, Publishers Group West, Consortium, Chronicle, Perseus, and many other distributors and their imprints.

And technical book publishers like O'Reilly, Addison Wesley, Apress, Wrox, John Wiley and Sons, the Dummy series, etc

And university presses like Princeton, Duke, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Columbia, etc.

And literally a bazillion boutique presses.

Mark Hernandez
Information Workshop

I don't think there was anything missing at all. McGraw-Hill isn't making their books available through the iBookstore. They never said they were. Their business is in educational textbooks. The digital market for them is served through CourseSmart.

According to Wikipedia: CourseSmart is a new venture founded and supported by the following higher education textbook publishers: Pearson Education; Cengage Learning; McGraw Hill Education; John Wiley & Sons; F. A. Davis Company; and the Bedford, Freeman, Worth Publishing Group.

According to CourseSmart, over 7000 of their books are available today on the iPhone, and as a result, the iPad as well.

According to Terry McGraw on Tuesday, this makes approx 95% of their textbook catalog available on the iPad/iPod/iPhone devices.

They currently sell on a 180 day subscription basis, more than a third of all college textbooks online.

This makes the McGraw-Hill announcement pretty big, but didn't necessarily mean they should have been part of the presentation yesterday. Their app hasn't had a chance to be retooled with the updated SDK, so it made more sense for them to announce it themselves apart from the announcement of the iPad.

The only part I question is Terry McGraw's timing.

I could care less what happens to McGraw-Hill. Their books are overpriced, and I also love that they work with professors at colleges to design special editions only available at campus bookstores costing well over $100. But, I guess the good news is now I can get an ipad version of that same book for $85 that I can't sell back. Now thats how you do business.

P.S. This is not a knock on iPad, but rather the bloodsucking textbook companies.

Either way. You know McGraw-Hill is knocking on Apple's door asking how they get in the iBook Store.

I'm hoping the big text book publishers won't get it and just ignore it like the music industry did with the MP3 players. It will open up an opportunity for independent publishers to play on even ground. Because a book publisher will want to charge the same price for the digital version. Especially in the area of text books that they release minor updates every year and sell whole new versions to schools at full price. It's a ridiculous practice that is hurting our educational system.

Looking at Wikipedia, they appear related but mostly independent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGraw-Hill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macmillan_Publishers

Pearson acquired the Macmillan name in America in 1998, following its purchase of the Simon & Schuster educational and professional group (which included various Macmillan properties). Holtzbrinck purchased it from them in 2001. However, McGraw-Hill continues to market its pre-kindergarten through elementary school titles under its Macmillan/McGraw-Hill brand.

That doesn't mean anything did or didn't happen as a result of their CEO's snafu the other day, but I'd say it wouldn't have been out of place for there to have been a big "McGraw-Hill" logo up there yesterday along with the others.

It could be that McGraw-Hill was told by Apple that they were not going to be in the announcement, but did have a deal, so they announced for themselves.

It is possible that apple might have approached McGraw Hill few months back and would be in talks with them. The talks may not have been finalized to a point where McGraw Hill could be mentioned in Steve's demo.

It could be terry McGraw's wishful thinking that he already considered himself the apple partner, or possibly he just wanted to impress the interviewer by mentioning his apple connections and secret knowledge of the Tabloid.. err. Tablet.

Has anybody bothered to Google up Macmillan and McGraw-Hill to see how the two are linked? Isn't that a big Macmillan name in the lower left? Is there something missing?