Digital Textbooks

Textbooks, for Blinn students have become a necessary investment. Every year students enroll for courses, and then purchase the necessary textbooks. Since textbooks are required for every course, the prices of these books are placed at any level. The prices of these textbooks have already started an adaptation to an alternate, more efficient, and cheaper method. Digital textbooks are starting to become more popular. Relative to the times and advancement in technology, digital textbooks are the way of the future. This new and improved method will save students pursuing an education hundreds of dollars and offer them much more than any paperback textbook. Besides being a money saver to students, Blinn will also save money due to the decreases in price. The benefits of digital textbooks are evident, and outweigh any that a paperback textbook could offer.

Blinn is one of the oldest colleges in Texas, Blinn enrolled around sixteen thousand students this past fall and is known for being a prestige college that gives students the opportunity to achieve great success. Despite the significant difference in price of tuition between Blinn and a larger university, such as Texas A&M, the costs of textbooks are the same, they are very expensive. Students are doing everything possible to save money when buying books. Most students are visiting websites like amazon.com or halfpricedbooks.com to find the best deals. If Blinn was to offer a method of distributing books that would cut the costs, students would find a little more breathing room financially.

After research, Digital Textbooks evidently is the answer. Students have to consider all cost when enrolling in college. If Blinn was to offer digital textbooks, the price for textbooks would be cut in half therefore, possibly increasing enrollment due to the affordability. The digital textbooks are downloadable to any computer, making the accessibility far greater than that of paperback books. The majority of students purchase used books to avoid the steep prices of new textbooks. Half of the time these textbooks are purchased off campus therefore, Blinn is not gaining revenue from books that are not bought from their bookstore. The introduction of a cheaper source of the material in forms such as digital textbooks will push students to purchase from BLINN bookstores instead of off campus resource, and increasing profit for Sam.

The issue stated in this report is simply that Blinn should offer digital textbooks for those who can not afford the steep prices of paperback textbooks. Every year billions of dollars are spent on paperback textbooks. According to Roediger, Henry “for student attending colleges, books amount for nearly a fourth of their total cost of attending college”. Students have to throw out hundreds of dollars every semester to pay for books they will sell back for a small fraction of the price. Offering another source other than paperback books at a more reasonable