Hundreds of students stand in tightly weaving lines at the BYU Bookstore, ready to barter three months of grocery money for a handful of textbooks. They wonder why they are able to get student discounts everywhere else they go, but on their own turf, they are robbed.
It’s a world of business. Everyone needs to make their money, including the writers, the printers, the distributors, etc. Textbooks cost money to create. There are the many pages of information, and color pictures to keep a student’s focus. Students end up shouldering this financial burden. Tomorrow’s taco is being traded for today’s unread appendices. So why don’t we cut out the middle man, and make e-books the standard for students.
Why are we still trudging through dusty pages of voluminous tomes and carrying heavy backpacks with our chewed up No. 2 pencils? The point of academia is to innovate and to generate economical ways to become more efficient — and that is exactly what e-books are all about. As our world is evolving, the trend is moving toward paperless. Computers, notebooks and tablets are readily available to provide easy and affordable access to textbooks that shouldn’t be so expensive. Everything is being made available electronically, and textbooks need to follow that trend.
There’s no reason not to make the change. Do it for the children. Move to e-books.
ANNA WOODS
Durham, Calif.
