So which textbook would you want?

I mentored an Honors student's capstone project -- which was a study of the state of e-publishing. Jeff gave his presentation yesterday, which went very well, and during the Q&A period, one of the students in the audience mentioned that in his chemistry class, he'd been given the choice of either buying a printed copy of the textbook or an e-book. The printed textbook was $150; the e-book was $100.

Yeah, yeah: textbook prices are insane... but that's another topic. When you can get a textbook for $50 less, you'd obviously jump at the chance, right?

Not so fast. The student went on to say that it was far easier to get to the charts and tables at the back of the book in the print version, that it was faster to move to a particular page in the print version, that he could mark up the page if necessary. He also noted that the e-book was essentially a 'rental' -- for his $100, he had access to the book via a password through a web server for the semester. After the semester ended, his password would be retired and he would no longer be able to access the book. Nor could he download the file directly to his computer; it resided always on the server, and to access it also meant that he had to have internet access.

He said that the first semester he chose the cheaper route; for his second Chem course, he chose to get the book -- since he then had a book he could either choose to keep for future reference or sell as used and recoup some of his money.

Don't know how common that experience is in the textbook industry, but that singular experience doesn't seem to be much of a bargain to me. I'd take the book every time, myself, given those two choices.

What about you? Are there better e-textbook options out there?

Review: A Magic of Dawn

The Fantasy Book Critic site has a long review of A Magic of Dawn up at their site, by Liviu Suciu -- a very nice review indeed.

Here's the "money quote"

"A Magic of Dawn is epic fantasy with a bent towards intrigue, politics and faith but with lots of action too and written in a very clear and enjoyable style that makes pages almost turn by themselves. The Nessantico Epilogue with the city as a POV makes for quite an elegiac finish… A whirlwind tale of intrigue and war, love and faith, prophecies and redemption with magic, battles, assassinations, secret relationships, but also families and their shared joys and sorrows."

Elegiac... Now there's a word you don't often hear!