Digital Content Delivery

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, I can’t help but think about cold treats. There’s an ice cream store in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa that is called Cold Stone Creamery.  I’m sure you are probably familiar with this business concept.  The customer walks in, looks at a large sample of ice cream flavors (ranging from vanilla to cookie batter, to banana) and numerous mix-ins (such as Oreo, Snickers, brownie, or Cookie Dough). 

Now the customer can do one of three things when they enter: they can order an existing creation directly from the menu; use the menu as a template and add their own mix-ins; or create their own treat from scratch.

This concept dovetails perfectly to my work at Kendall Hunt Publishing.  As a leading higher education textbook publisher, we allow professors to create, adopt, or customize a variety of our college textbooks and ebooks.

Like my father-in-law orders his ice cream treats directly from the menu, so to can a professor adopt a textbook directly from our online college textbooks catalog.  This serves him well.  He gets a tested and proven ice cream treat – similar to a professor getting a classroom tested textbook.

Or you could be like my wife and use the menu at Cold Stone as a guide.  She looks up a certain ice cream flavor and consults a list of recommendations to meet her palate.   Her favorite is the cake batter ice cream with the cookie dough mix-in.  This is very similar to Kendall Hunt’s customization process.  Professors can meet with one of our educational consultants, discuss their higher education course, and discuss their options.  They can adopt an existing book and add their own content to create a digital course pack; they could consult our digital learning center to see some of our existing material to add, or they could create a new digital coursepack and deliver via our content delivery system.  The possibilities are truly endless!

Finally, the customer can walk into this ice cream store and invent their own ice cream creation.  This is how I like to roll.  Throw a little bit of this, little bit of that, and bam, a new creation!  As always, Kendall Hunt Publishing offers the educator to create their own course content to meet the needs of them and their students.  Professors can create their own college ebooks, college textbooks, or digital coursepacks. This is the principle that Kendall Hunt was based on and has followed for over sixty years…

All this talk about ice cream is making me hungry…..Thank heavens that Kendall Hunt Publishing offers online content delivery so I can work on the run….I’m off to the ice cream store!

We spend a great deal of time here on the KH blog talking about our outstanding PreK-12 curricula. But there’s a whole other side to our business that I’d like to share with you:  our custom publishing for higher education. No, not vanity press, but true custom publishing. We’ve been doing this longer and better than anyone else. Ever have a professor in one of your higher education courses who gave you the book list, but then supplemented with all kinds of material and research of his own? Those are the professors who have discovered the value of custom publishing with KH.

We got started in the business back in 1944, when our founder, William C. Brown, bought the rights to 26 workbooks and lab manuals written and used by Midwestern professors. These titles, therefore, had guaranteed sales in those authors’ schools.  Kendall Hunt’s story is unique in today’s publishing industry full of mergers and acquisitions. You can read the rest of our story here.

Today, our Higher Education division offers you the opportunity to custom publish a title for your class with all your own, original material. Or, you can use some of your material, and some of the vast library of material Kendall Hunt has available to custom publish one of our existing titles for your specific school and course. You can use digital content delivery exclusively, or you can combine a traditional textbook with online course materials to create a hybrid product that will work for the digital generation as well as returning students. Check out our custom publishing options and solutions today!