Oh, but they are doing it, except for the part about "a very reduced price."The Annoyed Man wrote:Academia ought to be called out on the ecological impact of their revisions. The rational way to do textbooks in this day and age is to have students buy a Kindle, or a Nook, or an iPad (or some other similar technology costing a fraction of a semester's book budget), and make the textbooks available for download at a very reduced price. The technology costs a small portion of a total book budget; the books can sell for much less money; the cost of producing electronic revisions is vastly less expensive than reprinting a book; you get to save a tree; you only need to buy the device once and you can resell it if you decide you don't want to keep it upon graduation........WHY AREN'T THEY ALREADY DOING THIS????
Let me give you an example from the class I'm taking now. The electronic version of the textbook (from the publisher) costs roughly 3/4 of the campus bookstore price for a new book. That sounds like a nice discount. However, it's single user and non-transferable. It's also more than I paid Amazon for the new textbook plus Monster Hunter Vendetta.
