Oh. For some reason I thought this had something to do with creating an independent textbook industry, part of Steve Jobs' dream of changing public education or something.
If it's just a way to eliminate backpacks, yawn, I guess.
Isn't the resale value issue more about college text books? What happens to public school text books? I remember them just getting older and older, I used to enjoy looking in the front cover and seeing a log of students who had the book going back to the early 1970s.
Well cost savings is a not going to be an issues. If anything they will try to get the schools stuck with a rather high re-accruing cost from the publisher they will want the schools to fork out every year for what might be at most minor updates to the book if any changes at all.
We have to look no farther than at the college book system to see the crap updates to many of the books.
Yes some books can justify being updated in a fast cycling. Most c
Example of books that can go a long time between updates and have very little loss. Math books, history books, grammar books, hell even most high school science books. Of all my high school classes I could think of 1 that could justify faster turn around (Computer science) and then another that MAYBE could justify a quicker update which was a world history book that was hitting on more reticence stuff. Reason being is the classes are generally covering well documented stuff that does not changed that much. High school science, sorry the areas you study in that area are generally very well documented and areas of science that have not changed much in decades.
If you want to higher about some crap updates I can look at college calculus text book. When I sold back my 3rd edition book that edition was around a decade old. This was 2004-2005ish when I sold it and it was still being used the following semester. Last time I check that same book is currently on its 9th edition. I happen to have my brothers copy of the same book that I did not get to sell and have look at it comparing the 7th and the 3rd edition. Want to know whats changed between them? The numbers for the problems. Nothing else changed. Hell most of those problems I could do the adjustments for the answers in my head. It was that big of a joke of minor changes.
Add to it the iPad is massive over kill for what they would want to the books to do and as such a huge rip off for the schools. A better deal would be something like the kindle fire which is 1/2 the cost of the cheapest iPad and would do everything they would need it to do.
Yeah, except ebooks usually cost exactly the same as printed books to buy, yet have zero resale value.
Time for greedy publishers to pass some of the savings they make through electronic distribution on to their customers.
Yeah I think publishers are liking the electronics books. It kills the market they hate which is the used book market. Like I said earlier they do crap updates (change the order of the problems) and do they often so new books have to be bought and students can not buy used. Electronics they offer you like a 10% savings over new book price but I can sell my books back college and after that is factored in I would save more. Never mind the fact I generally resell them for around 50% of what I paid for them if not as high as 70%-80%. Hell I have had some where I paid as little as $10 for the semester used of the book and a handful I have turned a minor profit on.
re: Costs.
The books might be cheaper. That saves the school money. But if the school doesn't provide an iPad - it's definitely not a cheaper solution for the student who doesn't pay for books (pre-College) to begin with.
Well space savings would be minor at most. Storing textbooks in class rooms over the summer is a non issue because the rooms go unused and during the year the books are with the students so no savings there. As for the literature books often times the school libraries store a bunch of class sets for those so storied with the rest of the books and it is not like they are going to get ride of those books.
