School text books

[jackastor]

I am wondering if there would be any support for converting school text books to ebook format.
Would people go for it? What could the possible benefits be?
What would the possible cost savings be?
Would the schools support this?

Any thoughts guys?

[ficbot]

I took a course that had an e-textbook option. It was a big mistake. It was $10 less than the paper version, but you could not download to a device (you had to read it off a secure website and be logged in), could not cut and paste for posting on the course message board, you could not search because some of the chapters were just image scans that had not been OCRd, and the book 'expired' the day after the course ended. There were no usability benefits to having it in e-form (e.g. the search or the ability to cut and paste into the course message board since this was an on-line course) and in fact there were deficiencies since I had to be AT my computer to use it. And it expires to boot? For such a paltry price difference, I would have rather paid $10 more and gotten a paper copy I could keep. It was an epic fail.

That said, as a college English major, I could have saved a fortune had ebooks been available as they are now. I got a complete works of Shakespeare WITH scholarly articles and footnotes for $2.99 off Amazon. That same sort of book, in paper, was $85 back in 1997 And all those obscure Victorian poets we read for two classes and never looked at again? Available for free on-line these days...

[taming]

I think this is not about Kobo, so it might be better in the general forum. Maybe ask to have it moved?

[PeterT]

Remember; text book publishers are in it for mega profit. And one way they help get that is to bring out new revisions of a text book each and every year, and then to ensure that schools teach courses based on the NEWEST edition!

[dreams]

Originally Posted by taming

I think this is not about Kobo, so it might be better in the general forum. Maybe ask to have it moved?

OP did request the move and it has now been moved.

[tubemonkey]

Once ereaders lose their fragile substrates and can survive a drop from a desk or book bag landing display side down, then by all means convert to ebooks. But not until then.

[Latinandgreek]

I think that it is a great idea. Instead of carrying around a heavy bag, you could carry your textbooks on a tablet, and save some money in the process.

Recently a course I audited made a PDF of the textbook available for free with a purchase of the paper copy of the text. I quite liked that idea, but I don't know how many of the students made use of it.

[jbcohen]

Would have been great back when I was an undergrad or grad student. I can remember lugging a three ton bag of books up a hill in a blinding snow storm to class, that was fun -not! and going to the campus book store to lean that the store is out of half of the text that I need - that was fun - not!. This could have saved my santity back then when I actually had one.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by jackastor

I am wondering if there would be any support for converting school text books to ebook format.
Would people go for it? What could the possible benefits be?
What would the possible cost savings be?
Would the schools support this?

Any thoughts guys?

I teach - Finance to undergrads. Many publishers nowadays include PDF versions for faculty - but I have been asking publishers for PDF versions of textbooks for years - and most do send them. I think it's great, but you need a device with a big screen and with the capability to handle annotations (hence, a touch screen). I use my iPad for that.

Benefits include portability (really, the main one), ease of searching, ability to delete/edit annotations, ability to share annotations.

Electronic versions could also be cheaper, and could be updated without the need to buy a whole new version, but good luck getting publishers sold on those ideas...

The potential, however, is there. But the market is too insulated from competitive pressures.

[paola]

or any other reflowable format - I would soo much love it! Problem is, though, that we are still some way away from being able to include tables and mathematical formulas as other than imges, with all the problems of scalability adn the like. I am hoepful that imporvements will come with the new EPUB 3.0 standard, but I am not holding my breath...

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by jackastor

I am wondering if there would be any support for converting school text books to ebook format.
Would people go for it? What could the possible benefits be?
What would the possible cost savings be?
Would the schools support this?

Any thoughts guys?

Yes, less books to carry.
Initially, not a lot, I think. Potentionally? A lot. If you know how much effort goes into those paper books and then the updates for them (correcting errors that did slip through) and don't even consider the cost of printing, storing and transporting them. Unlike the average novel, a schoolbook sees some very heavy use and needs to be replaced more often. And they're often more heavy and larger as well.
Yes. There is a pilot project running right now here, where the kids no longer have books, but an Ipad. It will run for 2 1/2 years. All books have been digitized and are available via an Ipad app. When the kids need the book, it's there.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by vxf

I teach - Finance to undergrads. Many publishers nowadays include PDF versions for faculty - but I have been asking publishers for PDF versions of textbooks for years - and most do send them. I think it's great, but you need a device with a big screen and with the capability to handle annotations (hence, a touch screen). I use my iPad for that.

Benefits include portability (really, the main one), ease of searching, ability to delete/edit annotations, ability to share annotations.

Electronic versions could also be cheaper, and could be updated without the need to buy a whole new version, but good luck getting publishers sold on those ideas...

The potential, however, is there. But the market is too insulated from competitive pressures.

OH I agree with you on that note. I am not saying that every E-reader is suitable. But there are a lot of tables that would be.

regards

jack

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I took a course that had an e-textbook option. It was a big mistake. It was $10 less than the paper version, but you could not download to a device (you had to read it off a secure website and be logged in), could not cut and paste for posting on the course message board, you could not search because some of the chapters were just image scans that had not been OCRd, and the book 'expired' the day after the course ended. There were no usability benefits to having it in e-form (e.g. the search or the ability to cut and paste into the course message board since this was an on-line course) and in fact there were deficiencies since I had to be AT my computer to use it. And it expires to boot? For such a paltry price difference, I would have rather paid $10 more and gotten a paper copy I could keep. It was an epic fail.

That said, as a college English major, I could have saved a fortune had ebooks been available as they are now. I got a complete works of Shakespeare WITH scholarly articles and footnotes for $2.99 off Amazon. That same sort of book, in paper, was $85 back in 1997 And all those obscure Victorian poets we read for two classes and never looked at again? Available for free on-line these days...

Thats a limitation I think we have passed. But I would definatly have been disapointed as well. I like the portability of Ebooks... I have over 3000 in my library.


regards

jack

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by dreams

OP did request the move and it has now been moved.

Thank you kindly

regards

jack

[RainingLemur]

I like the idea. I hope that something like this happens.