An e-book is the equivalent to a conventionally printed novel or textbook, but instead of having a hard copy, students will have access to materials through PDF files on their personal computer.
Russell Weldon, textbook manager for Auburn University Bookstore, said these electronic forms of textbooks will be available for students on the first day of classes.
“The e-books field is fairly limited for textbooks,” Weldon said. “The company we’re using has titles from 10 different publishers and of those, we are only using five. Even working with five publishers, there are not even 500 text titles available yet (for texts used by Auburn University),” Weldon said.
Weldon said e-books can be downloaded to personal computers or accessed by password.
“The biggest advantage (e-books) offers to students is that if you come to the bookstore and all the used books are sold out, the e-books will be available for a cheaper price than the new one,” Weldon said.
Weldon said e-books do cost more than used text books, but the price difference depends on the book or subject area.
“There is no buy back value of these so once you buy an e-book you cannot get your money back for it,” he said. “So the big financial drawback is that you can’t bring it back for any (monetary reimbursement).”
Among the advantages of the new technology, Weldon said students don’t have to worry about lugging around heavy textbooks and can enjoy the added incentive of being interactive with textbook materials.
“It’s convenient, basically all the things you like about computer (programming),” Weldon said.
Mary Skafidas, spokesperson for McGraw-Hill, one of Auburn’s publishers, said the interactive nature of the program is the greatest advantage of e-books.
“Students can highlight and make notes directly to the page, tag specific chapters and go back and refer to something particular just before a test,” she said. “I think our challenge is to get our students to become more aware of them and comfortable using e-books.”
Weldon said there will be a stack of cards shelved alongside textbooks and students interested in purchasing e-books have to take one of the cards to the cashier to check out.
“They are unlimited,” Weldon said. “Students are very wary of buying textbooks, (and) we want students to feel like they have more of a choice. We know that books are expensive, we want to do everything we can do to help (students) find the books you need and give you as many options as we can.”
Other bookstores in town also carry e-books.
Scott Johnston from J & M Bookstore said they have had e-books on their shelves for a couple of months in subject areas like Biology and Math.
Skafidas said McGraw-Hill publishes e-books in all major subject areas and has more than 800 titles. They provide titles in popular areas such as introductory Biology and Psychology texts.
While Thompson Publishing is not working directly with AU Bookstore, spokesperson Adam Gaber said interest is growing.
“We love the concept of e-books and have been investing in it for more than a decade,” Gaber said. “Only until the past few years have we seen so much interest in e-books from customers.”
This summer Auburn gave Biology 1020 students the opportunity to test out the product by offering the required text in e-book format free of cost.
