Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowl
While the lack of good random access is obviously a significant drawback for textbooks, there is something to be said for the convenience of being able to carry around all your textbooks in one small device and maybe the approach they should look to take is to include the ebook for a small premium when you buy the paper version.
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I think that option is far more likely a scenario than offering the e-textbooks at a discount from the paperbacks. Younger people would be far more likely to jump to e-textbooks if they had a 50% discount to paperbacks so its not likely to make sense from the publishers bottom line standpoint. Also if you think of it from a publishers perspective, you have a captive audience, students have to buy the books for their classes or fail so what is the ultimate motivation to sell your books cheaper? Will students buy 2 books because they are so cheap now, not likely unless they click the buy button twice by accident.
I still think the manufacturing aspect of creating a book is probably one of the cheapest costs per book because the same factory runs so many books through, the real cost are the back office type of costs and the salaries of the people that are distributing these things and those people don't want to take a pay cut so you can have a cheaper textbook, especially if they don't have to. It'll be an interesting thing to watch because scanning books is getting easier and easier, when the devices (Pixel Qi) are able to provide a better studying experience I suspect many students will find their own ways to get digital copies of their textbooks for a "reasonable" price if publishers don't establish a market early.
