E-Books Lower Cost of Learning

Six pounds, 1,232 pages and $175.75. As freshman Vera Sun searches the Cal Student Store for her required chemistry textbook, she cannot find a single used, less-expensive version.

"These are all new?" she asks of the shrink-wrapped copies.

Over the next few weeks, Sun, along with thousands of other students, will each spend hundreds of dollars scouring bookstores for course textbooks.

But some new Web sites sell digital versions of textbooks, keeping students' wallets from getting lighter and their backpacks from getting heavier.

CafeScribe, which was developed by Haas School of Business alumnus Bryce Johnson and now has about 6,000 users, sells digital textbooks for up to half off the cover price.

Users can then highlight, bookmark and annotate the e-books, while sharing notes with other users, searching in the text and researching subjects by clicking integrated Wikipedia articles.

Maura O'Neill, a Haas lecturer who helped Johnson begin CafeScribe, said the e-textbook industry could take off this year if retailers made their programs more interactive.

"Most of the e-textbooks have just digitized existing textbooks," she said. "But once we have it in digital, we can search, collaborate, share notes, reinvent content."

CafeScribe began with Johnson's 2004 master's thesis exploring why the e-book industry-which experts had predicted would be worth $5 billion by that time-had only amassed $9 million.

Johnson said he believed e-book retailers had largely failed because they had primarily focused on popular literature rather than niche audiences.

"Everyone had focused on the casual reader that read John Grisham or 'Jane Eyre' on the beach," he said.

Textbooks are a lucrative industry, worth $6.5 billion in the 2005-2006 academic year, according to the National Association of College Stores.

Johnson added that he had felt the potential benefits of

e-textbooks first-hand when he was a student.

"I was lugging around a freaking suitcase," he said.

Along with CafeScribe, other e-book services have emerged in the past year.

CourseSmart, which pairs with publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Company and McGraw-Hill Education, also offers e-textbooks at a reduced rate. Amazon.com debuted the Kindle in December 2006, a handheld e-book reader that stores 200 titles.

But convincing publishers to join the services poses a challenge, O'Neill said.

"I think that publishers are wanting to hold onto their monopoly," she said. "They're reluctant to embrace (e-books) because they're afraid that they won't have as much control."

Of every dollar spent on textbooks, the publisher spends approximately 57 cents on manufacturing, administrative and editorial costs, according to the Association of American Publishers.

But some publishers support the industry. Follett Higher Education Group, which stocks the Cal Student Store's inventory, offers about 1,000 e-textbooks, said Elio Distaola, Follett's director of public and campus relations.

Some students also welcomed the idea of e-textbooks. Janet Carrillo, a fifth-year psychology and anthropology major shopping at the campus bookstore, said she spends about $400 on as many as 10 textbooks per semester.

But freshman Kimberly Lau said she would miss physically turning and marking the pages of a book.

Sun agreed, even though she knows hardback books are costlier.

"For a book, you can take it everywhere," she said. "But sometimes the Internet doesn't work."

Tags: