For one thing — germane to your point about consumers’ rights — students have no choice about the books they buy: whether to buy a book at all, and which book to choose. Both decisions are made for them by their instructor. Letting students pick between Book A (new) and Book A (used and cheaper) may be better than nothing, but it is a Hobson’s choice; unlike in a typical competitive market, used book sales put no downward pressure on book prices, and the marketplace ultimately doesn’t benefit. (FWIW, I don’t favor abolishing the used book trade and I don’t blame students for using it — I simply wanted to point out the economic implications of the practice.)

For another, producing higher ed content is not something that can be done openly and collaboratively (a la free software), nor by small, nimble startups outflanking the big boys by marketing direct to the consumer (like self-produced musicians). Making books takes an enormous investment of time, money and talent, a top-down production model that will never change. That means that textbooks (or textbook content, if you prefer) will always be an expensive proposition to produce, and that expense is going to have to be absorbed by someone. It’s either the students or the government (i.e., all of us), take your pick. (Don’t ask the university — they just roll the cost back into tuitions.)

And for yet another, textbooks have a very short useful life. Most students get through the semester and want nothing more to do with their textbooks. An auto-destructing car is absurd; an auto-destructing textbook (for the majority who want it) makes a lot of sense … provided the incentives are there.

As I tried to make clear in my essay, the rising cost of books hurts both students and publishers. Digital textbooks potentially are a great solution to publishers, but even more so to students. Imagine having a textbook that can be updated every month, every week, when new developments occur within your discipline. Imagine a digital learning device that combines course content with email, web access, multimedia viewing and search. And the goddamn thing only weighs a pound. I’d take that over a textbook any day of the week. (Scratch that — I’d take that over five textbooks. That one pound gizmo holds your texts for your entire courseload.)

I admit pricing would be a concern. At least initially, the first digital textbooks would be pretty pricey until the development investment could be spread across more titles. Competition between publishers will help. Consumer vigilance will certainly be required. But even with those provisos, it sounds a lot better than the status quo.

And besides … it’s not like the publishers won’t sell you the book if you want it.

I appreciate your taking the time to comment.

Students and faculty are fed up with the current system and high textbook prices. Renting books, with fixed expiration dates, doesn’t help. take a look at current pricing structures for rental companies, and the limitations they attach to their rented books, and you might see that the consumer does not benefit. The digital age and DRM-enabled books empower publishers and take rights away from consumers.