Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
slightly lower price?! Should be significantly lower price, for there's no costs whatsoever involved in the copying and distribution of ebooks:
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Sure, those costs disappear, but those are insignificant in the grand scheme. Textbooks are expensive because of development (writing, revising, editing, images/graphs, layout, font organization, research, etc.... and again slightly differently for the teacher's edition); copying and distribution is a minimal portion of the entire cost. Sadly, just as in digital vs hard-copy literature, I expect that digital textbooks will be close to the same cost of hard-copy textbooks.
The primary benefits of digital readers will include annotating/highlighting, interactivity, public domain and freely-available resources, universal access (enlargement, color control, and read-aloud) and the possibility of creating a truly paperless classroom... but they won't include significantly reducing overall textbook costs.