by Byron Brown, News-Tribune
When students in my online course in intermediate microeconomic theory head for the bookstores, they will feel the pain of the marketplace. The required text for the course, Jeffrey Perloff’s sixth edition of “Microeconomics,” will lighten their wallets by a hefty $206.67 retail. Or $147.52 from Amazon. The book is a 20-chapter behemoth that tips the scales at over three pounds, more than the weight of two iPads. The best deal for the students is to buy a used copy in a local bookstore and resell it at the end of the course. That option will end up costing a student about $50 – one-fourth of the publisher’s suggested retail price. It’s the choice of about 75 percent of my students. Why didn’t most of the students choose the electronic version of the text? When publishers began producing e-texts they sold them for about one-half the suggested retail price of a new paper version. But students have shown a stiff resistance to buying them, mostly because they are 65-plus percent more expensive ($82.99 versus about $50 for the Perloff book) than the used paper option.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/01/29/2003731/the-e-text-revolution-apple-bites.html
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