In my case, I’ve found used books mainly for lower-division courses, and above that the used book supply is much thinner. And even with used books, the most reliable source is the school bookstore, that costs way more than half of the price for new.

I carry text books for the knowledge. My back doesn’t care for the sheer physicality. If you want the physicality, I guess you could get a monster laptop.

I feel old when I say this, and I’m only 26, but it’s sad that we’re losing the physicality of paper documents, textbooks, etc. Nothing electronic can ever compare.

However, I expect that I’ll have to wait for some future revision of e-Ink, or for Amazon to release a reader program for PCs. My biggest books are science textbooks with full-color illustrations.

As Microsoft often says about all the different licensing choices of its software: “Pick which one is cheaper for you.” Same can be true here.

Have no fears…this will not replace the paper text book market where revisions occur only every couple of years.
The cost of printing these text books is a very small proportion of the profit margin as opposed to newspapers, where printing and distribution costs are proportionally very high. So it is not as if there is a large incentive for publishers to go the electronic route.

This adds choice to the students. I personally would not have choosen to have all my textbooks trapped in a device that can break or be stolen. But I imagine it will appeal to many.

The eBook model for text books would allow updates to your books whenever they became available – which would be a reason to go digital – but the publisher would probably be looking for a hefty payment for the update :o(

Also, I thought that school bookstores counted on students reselling their books back to them for the needed revenue.

Either way, I really hope this works. It’s been a long time coming.

Ellen

But the big plus is the elimination of the used book market. Publishers have been trying everything they can think of to kill that market. They are offering incentives to instructors to package customized worksheets and syllabi with the book. They’ll print it, they’ll shrink wrap it just to force the students to buy new.

Professors who write these books release new editions every other year. Often times all that changes are the problems at the end of the chapter. (For crying out loud, how much did intro to calculus change since the last 30 years?)

All this to rip off the students more. The system makes me want to puke. Now they found a new way. Sell electronically. Don’t worry, you can still charge your 80-150 USD per textbook. And you eliminate the used market. Magnificent, isn’t it?!!

I was teaching an intro level course in the US again, I would assign the previous edition on purpose. Those can be had for $10 usually from Amazon Used…

Oh wait, that didn’t happen. I predict that eTextbooks will still cost a lot, and there will be DRM on them for ‘security theater’ to justify/enforce the same pricing model.