In a Digtal Age, Studentsstill Cling to Paper Textbooks

 October 19,2010

In Clinton, New York, the president of Hamilton’s college entrepreneur club have launched a site, which fulfills a most important need of today’s students, the students who walks through the colleges doors with old fashioned books in this twenty first century of lead by digital world. This site is a place where students can sell textbooks to one another.

Every teen in U.S.A has a phone or a laptop of his own, where they spend most of their time in chatting, messaging and enjoying the life of this digital world. But still recent studies made by the National Association of College Stores and the Student Public Interest Research Groups, a national advocacy network have shown that three quarters of the students still prefer the books than their digital versions, because they think in books it is easy to flip between chapters or highlight the paragraphs etc. 

A research done by National Association of College Stores shows that only 3 percent of the textbook sales comprises of the digital books which is expected to rise 10 to15 percent till 2012.

But still the interest of students is increasing day by day towards digital books, a the expenses on textbooks have been estimated to have rise four times the inflation rate in recent years which is quite a concern .

These issues also have attracted quite many politicians like Last month, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York urged more and more college stores to rent books, after this, a a survey carried out showed that among the 38 campus bookstores surveyed in New York City and on Long Island by his office 16 did not offer it.

There are also a lot of problems faced like, for instance taking Hamilton into consideration only one-fifth of the titles of textbooks are available as e-textbooks this fall. A stroll through the local bookstores showed that there is a lot of difference in prices. A book on constitutional law was $189.85 new, $142.40 used and $85.45 for rent, whereas the e-textbooks comes between a used one and a rented.

The spokesman for the National Association of College Stores, Charles Schmidt, said that most of the college store if sell a new book for 100$, then it would buyback for only 50$ and sell it to the next student for a high price of 75$.

The buyback price given by the bookstores also have caused a lot of problems like, a student Louis Boguchwal, a junior at Hamilton studying economics and math, tried to sell a linear algebra textbook worth100$ to which he was offered only 15$.

Despite with all these problems, students are referring more of the digital world than the old traditional fashion of printed world.

The companies are trying to build and modify new applications through which reading the textbooks would be a lot much easier, this would allow the student to flip in between chapters or highlighting texts etc.

The retailers like Amazon and textbook.com are allowing students to buy and rent the old used books. The site made by the Hamilton college entrepreneur has given the student freedom to sell or rent the books directly to one another.

Companies such as Barnes & Noble College Booksellers have developed its own application which allows student to navigate the e-textbooks on PCs and MACs, for which company is working hard for its distribution; they are even giving away the “College Kick-Start Kits” which include some classic e-books to the students.

Thus, Hamilton’s new nonprofit Web site, getmytextbooks.org. So far, have very light traffic, where only 70 books have been sold but still word is spreading among the students and hundred of colleges.