By: Brian

Brian
Tue, 01 Nov 2016 15:51:48 +0000

I’d be interested in data showing the average spent in total (per class/semester/year) for textbooks, and then the net cost after selling the book back. The graph only shows cost per textbook.

Textbook publishers love digital textbooks because it eliminates the middleman of bookstores (meaning more profit for publishers, since they don’t reduce the price much compared to physical copies). Digital textbooks can’t be sold back, and access to them often expires, so the student ends up paying almost the price of a physical copy for something they can neither keep nor sell back.

Bookstores love rentals because they get more revenue. Rentals are often a good deal, but again, you don’t end up with a copy you can keep, and you can’t sell it back to recoup the cost, so that needs to be taken into account.