Gold star in Lone Star state

Wendy Pye says a lot of oil money goes into Texan education. Photo / Janna Dixon

Kiwi publisher Wendy Pye says getting the nod to supply digital textbooks to Texas, United States, could turn into a multi-million-dollar business.

Pye's company, Award Publishing, is one of four providers to make the Texas Education Agency's approved list for early primary school English, arts and reading digital materials.

It means Award can now market its products to 1600 Texan school districts.

Pye said Texas was the "jewel in the crown" of educational publishing in the US, not least because it invested large amounts of its oil money in education.

The state did not have to rely on the federal government for particular grants and the Texas Legislative Council's most recent budget for school textbooks was US$750 million ($974 million).

She estimated that initial sales of her digital books would be a few million dollars but the potential was huge because every other state looked to Texas. Florida and California usually followed suit.

Pye will staff Award's booth at a major Texas educational conference on February 8. It will initially concentrate on the Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

Meanwhile, the company is in discussions in Florida and California. "I'm going to go for everything because this is a great opportunity."

Award's Kiwi-created digital reading programme had taken six years to develop with three years of testing, and the Texas approval process had taken seven months.

Wendy Pye Publishing had long been an exporter to the US but had been hit hard in the global financial crisis.

Pye said the market was huge and highly commercialised. "I don't think people in this country understand that education is big business in America."

Pye was listed on the last National Business Review Rich List with an estimated wealth of $70 million.

David Glover, chief executive of state-owned educational publisher Learning Media, said the US federal and state governments did not dictate expenditure in the country's mixed education system and the opportunities were significant.

It was nothing new for Kiwi publishers to do business in the US and his own organisation had been exporting there for 15 years. But it was still an achievement to be officially "adopted", as it was termed.

New Zealand was highly respected in the US for its literacy material.

Digital textbooks were the way forward, particularly in the US where there was a system of prescribed books for primary school, he said. The books were being replaced by digital solutions and teachers were also discovering that a less prescribed system was good for learning.

"That area is exploding and it will [also] be big here because of the broadband network the Government is putting into all the schools."

Glover is on the board of the American Association of Education Publishers as a result of his work on digital books.

BIGGER THAN TEXAS

* Population: 25.1 million

* Capital: Austin

* Gross State Product: US$1.22 trillion, the second highest in the US (2008)

* Industries: Oil, agriculture, technology

* Number of Fortune 500 companies: 57, first equal with California (2010)