As students begin to assemble once more at UVU, they may notice little orange tags next to textbooks in the campus bookstore. These orange tags indicate that the books to which they are affixed are available for purchase as e-books. While the bookstore has been offering this service for a couple of years, the practice is now gaining more widespread attention.
The bookstore currently offers nearly 45 textbooks as e-books, and there are plans to expand this number in the near future. “The company that we go through to get our e-books has probably about 2,000 titles total, so we just go through our whole list and see what’s available on e-book. It just depends on how many they can get from the publishers, too,” said Stephanie Bott, who is in charge of purchasing stock for the UVU Bookstore.
There are many advantages to an e-book. The most palpable among these is the lower price. For example, James Stewart’s COLLEGE ALGEBRA costs approximately $143 new, $107 used and only $85 as an e-book.
However, while e-books are immediately cheaper, they cannot be sold back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. Because of this, the price benefit is somewhat mitigated. Still, for students who are compelled to purchase substantial volumes of books, it may come as some relief to know that e-books are, in some cases, available as an alternative to the cumbersome, physical counterparts.
