Digital Textbook Usage Trends

In Mark Perry’s article, The college textbook bubble and how the “open educational resources” movement is going up against the textbook cartel, he discusses the increasing issues of cost for college students’ textbooks and the incoming cheaper alternatives.  The article states a startling and unfortunate statistic for young college students, declaring that textbook costs have increased 812% since 1978.  Although one must take the rate of inflation into account, the textbooks prove to have still increased severely, even after calculating inflation.

While this absurd increase in textbook prices makes the increase in medical services subsequently insignificant, there have been rapidly developing new solutions to this textbook bubble, bound to pop in the nearing future.  Some of these solutions include digital textbooks and open educational resources, both of which would lessen textbook costs for students.  With 23% of average adults reporting reading an ebook in the past year, ebooks in general seem to be gaining popularity in the United States as an acceptable and well-liked option for reading (source). While adults and children alike seem to be gaining familiarity with digital books, the acceptance and appreciation for these books increase as well, leading to more and more Americans choosing digital books each year.