Why can't you buy textbooks in a format that can be kept on the
computer, like PDFs? Why hasn't anyone pursued this business idea yet?

The first thing that comes to mind is that college kids can easily
share copies of the textbooks, making it risky. But if you could make
it as hard to steal a copy as it is to scan every page of a textbook,
it seems viable.

What I'm looking for is links to any news articles, press releases, or
websites talking about this idea.

As the following sources indicate, there has been considerable
activity in this area.  While reading books on a computer has many
drawbacks at this time, which appears to limit demand, electronic
versions of many textbooks are available.  MIT has even put all of its
course materials online through its OpenCourseWare program:
http://ocw.mit.edu/.

Sincerely,

Wonko

"Textbook publisher sees future in e-books" by Gwendolyn Mariano, CNet
news.com (March 14, 2001) http://news.com.com/2100-1023-254119.html

"Is there a textbook future for ebooks?" Online Publishing News (March
19, 2001) http://www.onlinepublishingnews.com/htm/n20010319.040095.htm

"SunRav BookOffice" FinalDownload (March 25, 2005)
http://www.finaldownload.com/home_personal_ebooks_information_databases_sunrav_bookoffice.html

"Full-Text eBooks" Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries (February 22, 2005)
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/resources.htmld/etexts.htmld/

"Online Mathematics Textbooks" by George Cain, Georgia Institute of
technology (April 5, 2005)
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html

"Textbook publisher sees a future in ebooks" Online Publishing News
(April 2, 2001) http://www.onlinepublishingnews.com/htm/n20010402.042429.htm

"SafariX Textbooks Online" http://www.safarix.com/

"E-textbooks clicking with colleges" by Marsha Walton, CNN.com
(September 5, 2002) http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/30/coolsc.ebooks/

"Textbook Publishers: Whose Afraid of eBooks?" Data Conversion
Laboratory (2005) http://www.dclab.com/textbooks.asp

Search Terms: textbook ebook

Thanks for the feedback! It doesn't sound like a business niche I'll
want to dip my toe into after all :)

In order to understand this, you have to understand the entire
business of selling college textbooks. As you probably know full well,
each year colleges force their students to buy new editions of
textbooks even though the reality is that the material has not been
improved or modified substantially. I've seen newer editions of my old
college textbooks and with the exception of a few changes to practice
problems, the course material is pretty much the same.
So why change the books? Because each time a new book is introduced,
old ones lose their value and students can't simply buy a used version
or bum one off a friend.  It's really all about making a profit.

Introducing e-books has several problems. For starters, it would mean
new competition to the traditional book format.  Since so many people
have an entrenched interest in making money in textbooks, it is hard
to convince the publisher that the potential loss to one department is
worth the gain to another.  The 'e' department will have to suck
competition away from the traditional book department, and you can bet
that there will be a lot of infighting to prevent that from happening.

And with e-books it is easy as pie to just file share, something that
truly drains away profitability. At least with a hard copy, you know
you cannot file share unless you literally Xerox the whole book (and I
have seen that done, amazingly).

In addition, even if the file is easily downloaded, a student will
most likely end up having to print many pages. Most people still
haven't gotten used to the idea of reading an entire book on their
computer screen.

My hunch is that the time when college students simply download their
textbook is a few years away.  Most college classes now allow students
to view lecture notes and supplementary material online, but this is a
far cry from actually having the textbook posted online.  I think this
will eventually happen, however, but not right away.

I've often wondered this one too. I don't see what problem there would
be with adding the cost of the ebook into the cost of the class and
paying a yearly subscription to the publisher to allow everyone in the
class access to the ebook. I imagine it would be cheaper for
distribution at the very least and they wouldn't have to worry about
people stealing it. And they'd get paid full price for every student
every year, so they wouldn't have to make those meaningless updates
every 2 years. All in all, it seems like it would make them a lot of
money. If they passed part of that on to the students, it would take
on faster. And, hey, some students might not have computers and want
the paper copy. Perhaps they could refund them the ebook price if they
presented a paper copy of the book or similar. I don't think it's as
much of a problem as it first appears to be. Maybe in a few years
they'll figure something out along these lines and we'll have the
option for ebooks in school. I imagine there will also be more
pressure for ebooks as tablets and laptops become more popular. Here's
to the future!

Jem Tallon

Although it is a breach of copyright I personally think it is
reasonable to download an e-book once you own a hardcopy (there are
numerous sources).

A digital library + http://desktop.google.com/ is fantastic!

Also checkout: http://print.google.com/print?q=HCI