Supplementary online content, greater emphasis on analysis and India-centric examples... education primers have changed beyond recognition in the country.

Guidebooks for competitive examinations and higher education are now more tech-oriented, India-specific, analytical and precise.

There was a time, a little more than a decade ago, when education primers were slim unimaginative volumes of stock questions and answers with a few activity-oriented papers to solve at the end of the book.

Education books, on the other hand, were humungous information overloads, without precision information or pithy analyses to help students develop an aptitude and razor-sharp reasoning prowess.

But time is at a premium and attention spans shorter. Hence the change in the format of content, say industry insiders.

"The content of college and university education texts have changed. We don't have to sift through pages to look for what we need. The formats of our books are more lucid, concise and yet analytical.

The abundance of Web supports that come with books allows us to go beyond the run-of-the mill for reference and seek views on experts available online," Rajesh Kumar Mishra, a second year Delhi University student, told IANS.

Education books are adapting to online aids with digitisation making inroads, said Showick Thorpe, author of the CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test) Manual 2011.

"Education books are now being written to give 360 degrees of information not only for written examination but also interviews and to increase knowledge thereafter," Thorpe told IANS.

Thorpe, who owns the quality knowledge content brand Thorpes and V&S Thorpes Education, added: "The erstwhile manuals were mere compilations of questions that could be asked in examinations."

"Students now look for more information and want to read more with different views by different teachers. We provide a little beyond what the student requires."

Several generic higher education books written by foreign authors are also being adapted keeping the Indian audience in mind, said Anish Srikrishna, chief marketing officer of Pearson Education Limited, one of the largest publishers of education books globally.

Srikrishna cited the example of the 13th edition of Philip Kotler's famous book "Marketing Management", which Kotler co-wrote with Kevin Keller, Abraham Koshy and Mithileshwar Jha as "Marketing Management: A South Asian Perspective".