New York Times on the dim future of e-textbooks

[Alexander Turcic]

Last year, as you may recall, Princeton University was one of the first schools to announce the availability of e-textbooks backed by a pilot project from MBS Textbook Exchange. Under the initial version of the project, textbook downloads were sold for 33 percent off the cost of a new, printed copy, but would only be usable for about five months. It didn't take an economics degree to see where antipiracy efforts had gone too far. Shortly after the launch, most of the publishers involved decided to get rid of the expiration date issue. Nevertheless, as the New York Times reports today, e-textbooks have thus failed to gain acceptance:

Few students have warmed to electronic textbooks, despite their increasing flexibility and much cheaper price - typically 40 percent less than a new textbook and 20 percent less than a used one ... MBS Direct, which sells some 700 college textbooks in digital form, started the program at 10 campuses last fall and 31 this spring. Interest has been modest - about 5 percent of the total sales for a given text - but that's encouraging enough to expand to more than 300 campuses next semester, says Dennis Flanagan, chief executive of MBS Direct.

Publishers still haven't learnt the lesson about being open and inclusive with their customers. While we applaud all that's been accomplished to date (the availability of e-textbooks in general, the removal of expiration dates in particular), remaining DRM obstacles (only 100 pages can be printed a week, copies can only be transferred to identified computers, e-textbooks cannot be resold) will prevent the venture from ever becoming successful.

I'm so tired of freaking expensive books and the fact they keep coming out with new additions that have like a word or picture changed every year. I have been using the site cheapesttextbooks.com which has really got me through my college years, they gave me really good deals on a whole lot of book sites. I only heard of them through money magazine last year as the best site for cheap textbooks, they have saved me a bundle on my overpriced nursing books.