Princeton's bookstore and those of several other universities announced a plan to offer digital textbooks to their students in the fall. They'd be 1/3 cheaper than dead-tree books, but would have fairly onerous restrictions on them like being tied to 1 computer, not being able to be resold and expiring after 5 months (which the publisher can make variable). I applaud the universities on their efforts to offer choice to their students, but I think this current incarnation will fail due to the onerous restrictions demanded by publishers wanting to protect their lucrative incumbent revenue stream.
Since many students sell textbooks back at the end of the semester, the net cash saved for digital vs. paper is not that significant, especially to outweigh the disadvantage of the form factor of having a huge textbook as a file to read on the computer. The expiration restrictions will also put students off.
Besides price, the other big advantage offered is that the digital versions will be searchable by keyword. This should not be overlooked. If I were the publishers, I'd make the following changes:
1. Offer a digital verison at the same price as the regular one but with DRM more akin to what Audible or Amazon have (I don't know the specifics of these), especially where the customers gets to keep it forever and are able to transfer it to different computers (i.e. so they can re-sell it).
2. Offer the digital, perishable version as an add-on for a cheap price to those who've purchased the regular textbook (and who want the search feature)
3. Anyone who has purchased the perishable digital version can upgrade to a permanent one prior to the expiration date.
The reactions by Corante & Ed Felten (CS prof @ Princeton) are here and here.
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