Hitting the e-books

An expected increase in the demand for digital textbooks at colleges and universities doesn’t necessarily mean that prices will drop for consumers, according to a higher-education-publishing expert.

Bruce Hildebrand of Association of American Publishers says digital textbooks are more popular than ever before, but as that popularity increases, so will features that are within digital texts. Many digital texts now are accessible as PDF files, which makes them easy to access through a variety of computers and devices.

“In the future, I suspect they’ll be moving into more dynamic modes,” Hildebrand says and adds that those modes likely will resemble websites more closely—they’ll contain hyperlinks to different pages, contain places to write notes within the text, and stream audio or video files.

Those changes likely will mean higher prices, he says, although digital textbooks still will cost less than physical textbooks will.

According to U.S. Public Interest Research Group, students spend an average of $900 per year on textbooks. Digital textbooks can cost up to 60 percent less than their physical counterparts, Hildebrand says. Also, college students are learning quickly how to pay for only what they need from an e-book, because many publishers sell digital versions of book chapters at $1.99 apiece.

According to National Association of College Stores, digital textbooks are projected to account for up to 15 percent of the course materials that are sold this fall. In 2010, digital textbooks accounted for only 3 percent of the $5.85 billion market.

P. Snyder