So I expected students to be a huge market for scientific and academic publishers. But to my surprise, according to market research firm Student Monitor, only 11% of all students buy e-textbooks.

Here are The 10 most important reasons:

- Availability: not all books they need are available and students typically take an all-or-nothing approach, which means they like to buy everything at once and at the same time;

- Cost: e-textbooks prices are still relatively high and combined with the starting cost of buying a device it’s still rather pricy;

- Ownership: they can’t lend or sell E-Books to others. 

- Ease of use: note taking is still not advanced enough for most students;

- Storage: most devices, especially at the low end of the market, offer a fairly limited storage and e-textbooks are usually rather heavy: few books on a device;

- Competition: there are better online alternatives for getting information. 

- Awareness: most of today’s students grew up with print and are not used to digital; 

- Experience: studying from screen is different than from paper; 

- Findability: It’s still hard to find a lot of E-Books (metadata)

- Expectations: in general, students expect more usability and social integration.

Some of these look familiar: availability, cost, ownership – general drivers of E-Book adoption we've seen pop up in research over the last few years.

Read the full article here.

Source: Futurebook