e-Textbooks: The Student’s lifeline
June 26th 2008 06:42
Major online publishing group Ingram Digital has released details which reflect a 400 percent increase in digital textbook sales. The study found that users are increasingly being driven away from hard copy in favour of e-Textbooks.
At present e-Textbooks are anywhere up to 50 percent more expensive than hard copy. This has a lot to do with licensing costs and associated charges measures designed by software companies to maintain product security.
47 percent of those surveyed said that the cost of e-Textbooks was acceptable when considering the relative expense of purchasing and storing hard copy textbooks. Significant proportions of e-Textbook users (46 percent) identified their motivating factor as convenience while 45 percent said that the interactive nature of the medium was very important to them.
According to Ingram Digital, VitalSource is the digital textbook platform of choice among the top academic publishers. Ingram is expecting that by the Northern Hemisphere’s next academic semester, all of their current texts will be available for students in digital format.
The only problem for students might prove to be that they can’t sell their old textbooks to their juniors. Perhaps they’ll have to sell their computers and upgrade that way?
At present e-Textbooks are anywhere up to 50 percent more expensive than hard copy. This has a lot to do with licensing costs and associated charges measures designed by software companies to maintain product security.
47 percent of those surveyed said that the cost of e-Textbooks was acceptable when considering the relative expense of purchasing and storing hard copy textbooks. Significant proportions of e-Textbook users (46 percent) identified their motivating factor as convenience while 45 percent said that the interactive nature of the medium was very important to them.
According to Ingram Digital, VitalSource is the digital textbook platform of choice among the top academic publishers. Ingram is expecting that by the Northern Hemisphere’s next academic semester, all of their current texts will be available for students in digital format.
The only problem for students might prove to be that they can’t sell their old textbooks to their juniors. Perhaps they’ll have to sell their computers and upgrade that way?
| 48 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog









