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The iPad and NOOKstudy were supposed to usher in the death of the traditional textbooks. Yet, for all their undeniable advantages (lower price being key amongst them, since a single semester's texts can cost up to $500) students have clung to their bound-paper tomes. But while Google searches have replaced microfiche and Skype has replaced weekly phone calls home to ask for money, the iPad and its ilk have yet to find a place in college classrooms. Students who spoke to the New York Times cited everything from concerns about battery life, the vulnerability of computing platforms to malware and the temptation of sites like Facebook as reasons they continue to rely on printed texts.In 2010, digital editions only accounted for three-percent of textbook sales. The National Association of College Stores expects that number to reach as high as 15-percent by 2012, but e-textbook publishers face an uphill battle. The association's own research and a separate survey performed by the Student Public Interest Research Groups show that a full three-quarters of students prefer printed and bound textbooks to digital ones. As more texts become available in digital format and as e-reader software matures, e-texts are likely to become more popular. But, for the immediate future, it seems like there will still be a market for used books as students cling to one of the last vestiges of our fading analog world.
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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsGoodOct 21st 2010 9:39AM
You'll also find that there aren't that many textbooks that are published digitally. My girlfriend's uni gets some sort of sponsorship by a particular publisher which requires them to study books from that publisher. Because they do that they're able to set prices high and to keep prices as high as possible they only publish them in a physical form.
UberSilOct 21st 2010 3:51PM
I find this funny.
I had a discussion on a tech board about how one of the reasons I wouldn't buy a Ipad right away is because it was missing several necessary functions like handwriting recognition and easy equation writing. Many people said that it didn't need it because they used laptops to take notes and you could get the books on laptop just as easily. And yet.