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Some students are saving money (and their backs) with e-texts

Like most university students heading back to school, Kerry Alvarez is preparing to make her annual donation to the campus book store.

The third-year sociology student at Hamilton’s McMaster University says she expects to shell out more than $400 on textbooks this semester alone.

“I don’t really like it,” said Alvarez, 23. “Money is really tight, especially with the economy and all.”

It’s perhaps no surprise that the dwindling bank accounts of students like Alvarez, coupled with the popularity of technology like Apple’s iPhone, has led to the emergence of a cheap alternative to the bulky tomes of days past: downloadable digital textbooks.

Download one from CourseSmart LLC, an online marketplace for digital textbooks, and you’ll gain access to a document that’s got all the charts, tables, and graphics as a physical book – for about half the price, according to the company.

The National Association of College Stores – a U.S. group that also represents 72 Canadian stores – predicts that digital textbooks, while currently representing only a tiny portion of the market, could account for 15 per cent of all university textbook sales by 2011-12.

In 2007, Montreal’s Concordia University became the first post-secondary institution in Canada to offer e-textbooks, as they’re also known, in its bookstores.

“I think it’s a very good trend,” said Colleen O’Neill, executive director of the Canadian Publishers’ Council’s higher education and trade division.

E-textbooks have been available in Canada for four or five years, mostly through pilot projects, said O’Neill. Their overall market share is currently about five to eight per cent, she said.

While there’s a good deal of optimism about the shift to electronic learning – which O’Neill believes will also reduce the publishing industry’s environmental footprint – not everyone is ready to tear down their bookshelves.