College Students: Electronic Textbooks vs. Physical Textbooks

[Cherrim]

Ideally, I'd love to buy my textbook and also get a digital copy to do with as I please (er, reading-wise, lmao).

But I guess if I had the choice it would depend on the course. For something like math, I'd definitely want the hard copy because I tend to do math homework wherever I happen to be. If I have a few hours to kill on campus, I'll bring my math textbook along and do some homework in the library. For something where I'd only be buying it to do readings every week, I'd probably just get a digital copy.

Though if more books were available digitally and it wasn't hard to toss them on my netbook or even my phone, I'd do it that way almost every time, probably. :s

 

[Capris]

I'm trying to find a reason to rationalize why I would rather own the physical copy over an e-book but I can't find anything that I personally would consider a problem. Whatever the reason I hesitate to choose e-books over physical copies, so I'm going to have to go with physical copies.

I still think e-books are an extremely viable option.

 

[Melody]

I'd go for e-books if it weren't for the fact that book publishers still try to charge you the same damn price for an e-book as they do for the physical book! Sure, they might knock 15 or 20% off the cover price of the physical book, or maybe even 50% but the price for an e-book is still in outer-space! Not to mention that you have to deal with the asinine and draconian DRM of whatever system they're using, which in my opinion, severely degrades the value of ANY digital media. Sure, if I buy very cheaply on a rental basis, then DRM is acceptable. If I'm to OWN that copy, I want FULL RIGHTS to do ANYTHING with that file. No encryption, No restrictions and full compatibility with ANY FORMAT I choose to convert it to. At the current price point of typical e-textbooks, that is what I FULLY EXPECT!

So this is why I prefer physical textbooks, you pay normal price...and usually you can get a 40% buyback rate. Ok, 40% isn't great but it's cash back and I can do whatever the hell I want to that physical textbook that I see fit. If I want to scan parts of it and digitize it, then no law in the world can stop me from doing so, most of those merely prohibit the sharing of those copies.

 

[Livewire]

There are a few kids in some of my classes at College that use Kindle/Ebooks with all of thier books for the semester on them, and it's nice to not have to lug those books around with you everywhere you go. Plus, in the long run, the Ebooks will cost less than physical textbooks anyway.