She complimented her audience on correctly answering 'false' to both questions. In her experience, students will do anything to avoid buying textbooks. Professors are turning increasingly to photocopied packages instead. There is increasing demand for course content and syllabi to be available on the Internet, so articles get scanned in, and the course syllabuses themselves are becoming more and more elaborate and more like textbooks. Reading lists are meanwhile becoming lighter.
Students expect free information and are reading fewer books, in favour of video and Internet.
In these inauspicious conditions for African publishers seeking to break into the US and Canadian markets, she recommended giving more attention to what she described as the amateur scholars, i.e. those who may not be accredited and may have no connection with any university, but who love Africa and will buy materials from there. Publishers blame a declining market, reflecting declining library resources. The funding crisis has had a serious impact. Some lively series do continue nevertheless. Many are moving into fiction to increase profitability, e.g. Northwestern.