"nteractive textbook publisher Inkling announced today that it's struck a distribution partnership with Follett, the largest college bookstore retailer in the industry. Follett, which operates some 900 college bookstores, says it will make "hundreds of titles" from Inkling available to its customers in the fall."

"Textbooks are a thing of the past, says the common wisdom. Well, the common wisdom of the Technorati maybe. The problem with that thinking is that the number one publisher in the world is Pearson, a textbook publisher, who brought in $7.75 billion in 2009. Pearson, as Tim Carmody noted in a January Wired article, owns 50 percent of the Financial Times, as well as the number two trade house: Penguin. The second largest textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, owns Standard and Poor's. To say textbooks are big business is like saying bullets are ouchie."

"The CIT has been monitoring trends in e-textbooks and, in recent months, has explored new options for the traditional classroom texts with Duke instructors."

"Barnes & Noble is spinning off its college-textbook and digital divisions into a new subsidiary, bolstered by a $300-million investment by Microsoft, that is aimed at turning more college students on to electronic textbooks."

stats on ebook reading & more from Pew study on future of libraries

"Last year, I took at look at the growth of e-readers (many equipped with Web browsers) and e-books. Less than 12 months later, it's clear digital books are taking over."

"Readers of e-books like to read in all formats, they favor print books for sharing and to read to children, and on average they read more books over all than print-only readers do."

"Australia, India, the U.K. and the U.S. lead the world in e-book adoption rates, according to Bowker Market Research's Global eBook Monitor, released on March 27. In each of those countries, more than 20 percent of respondents report purchasing e-books in the six months before the survey, and about a third of respondents in the U.K. and U.S. say they have plans to purchase an e-book soon."

"In my research about the work being done to make electronic reading a more organic experience, one that is suitable for the engaged reading required in the study of books, I have found that software designers are beginning to listen to voices like mine. While some are developing ways that active reading can become a social process, others are exploring ways technology can actually improve our ability to interact with and connect texts. Ultimately, technology is valuable in the ways it can move us beyond what we are already capable of doing. We should not embrace technology for technology's sake. After this experience, I feel strongly that the use of electronic versions for the active study of texts still lags behind the advantages of a physical book"

"Logically, e-textbooks should be much cheaper than the print options available to students--but they're not. CT looks at the rationale behind their pricing, and the market factors at play."