Books, schmooks

As inevitably happens every semester, a few weeks in, I run into the issue of students who still do not have their textbooks. Ideally, I only have to deal with the handful of students who are waiting on financial aid disbursements, waiting on their next paycheck, or are simply trying to squeak by without buying the text; in reality, the campus Bookstore is nearly as big a problem as the first three.

I have students in both my ENG 120 and ENG 262 classes that do not have textbooks because the Bookstore did not order enough books and is now awaiting secondary shipments. Paired with the constant chatter about E-texts (especially since Apple just threw its bid back in the game), this textbook issue is definitely helping to sway me toward e-texts.

Now, to be clear, I realize that any number of college students simply won't treat an e-book the same as a hard book; think: out of sight, out of mind. I still love, and always will, allergen-creating paper books, but I also read probably half my books on my Ipad now. The beauty of an e-text, as opposed to ordering a book online, is that we only have to wait for an e-text to download (at most this takes maybe 30 minutes, with slow internet and a big file), as opposed to waiting on the packaging process, post office, etc.

But will e-books and e-texts actually replace our paper texts? I think they will definitely start to supplement hard-copy texts, but replace them entirely?

What do you think?