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"THE BOOKSTORE as we know it is doomed, because many of these establishments are going to go from making a little bit of money every day to losing a little bit. And it's hard to sustain daily losses for long, particularly when you're poorly capitalized, can't use the store as a loss leader and see no hope down the road. The death of the bookstore is being caused by the migration to ebooks (it won't take all books to become 'e', just enough to tip the scale) as well as the superior alternative of purchase and selection of books online. If the function of a bookstore is to stock every book and sell it to you quickly and cheaply, the store has failed."

"It is a conversation occurring on campuses across the country: If more and more students are buying and renting their course books online, why do they need a bookstore?"

"Although the open-source textbook concept has been embraced by student groups such as the Student Government Association in College Park, university officials say the challenges include connecting professors with the materials they need for the textbooks and creating a system to assess the quality of the books. Another complication: Many universities are bound to contracts with private companies to run campus bookstores, where many students purchase their textbooks. University System of Maryland financial records show that the bookstore contracts are not always lucrative, however - last year the system lost about $1 million."

"We met with the most obvious first: the textbook managers at the campus bookstore, where only 1% of book sales were in digital form. We received a demonstration of the digital platform and are now doing informal testing. This led to the creation of a Digital Course Materials page, to share the university's materials ordering policy, information about the digital platform, and textbook alternatives."

"Students are unknowingly ensnared in The Maze when they first stop into the college bookstore to collect required books prior to the start of classes. They may be shell-shocked by the prices, but feel they have no alternative but to purchase the materials."

"Aggregation is one of the core concepts of content presentation and commercialization. Any analysis of what happened to the record business, what is happening to newspapers, or the future of books and bookstores and magazines and TV that does not feature this concept prominently is almost certainly flawed."

"At the end of the semester, however, students would be required to return the print version to the publisher, preventing them from selling their used casebooks back to a bookstore or to their peers. "My immediate reaction was: 'My goodness, they are trying to to kill first sale!'" said Mr. Grimmelmann, a professor of law at Maryland."

"Key findings from the report include: When publishers bundle a textbook with an access code, it eliminates most opportunities for students to cut costs with the used book market. Of the access code bundles in our sample, forty-five percent-nearly half-were unavailable from any other source we could find except the campus bookstore. This eliminated student's ability to shop around and meant that they were forced to pay full price for these materials. For the classes using bundles, students would likely be stuck paying full price, whereas for the classes using a textbook only, students could cut costs up to fifty-eight percent by buying used online. Schools that have invested in open educational resources (OER) generated significant savings for their students. OER are educational materials that can be downloaded or accessed for free online while carrying many other benefits for students and professors. For example, in Massachusetts, Greenfield Community College's use of OER in three of the six courses in our study meant that students there could spend as little as $31 per course on materials, compared to a national average of $153 per course. Switching the ten introductory classes in our study to OER nationwide would save students $1.5 billion per year in course materials costs."

"The average cost for a textbook bundle in the report sample was $157, versus $134 for a new textbook from the college bookstore or $56 for a used textbook from Amazon. The report calculated that by switching from publisher textbooks to open educational resources from organizations like OpenStax, the 40 colleges in the sample could save students up to $13 million per semester for these 10 courses."

"Discover how to transform your professional development and become a truly connected educator with user-generated learning! This book shows educators how to enhance their professional learning using practical tools, strategies, and online resources. With beginner-friendly, real-world examples and simple steps to get started, the author shows how to harness information from physical and virtual communities and become a lifelong learner in the digital age."

"The following graph for average textbook prices is based on data obtained in the annual financial survey of college stores. The most recent data for "average price" was based on the sale of 5.5 million new books and 3.0 million used books sold in 142 U.S. college stores, obtained in the Independent College Stores Financial Survey 2014-15. "

"While eTextbook use is increasingly common, the reasons appear logistical (lower cost and convenience) rather than for pedagogical. The pedagogical side cannot be ignored. Publishers and providers of digital content need to increase the interactivity of the content in order to go beyond simple digital facsimiles of print versions. Additionally, instructors need to select eTextbooks with high quality features, as well as model the use of the eTextbook to show how to read and study effectively from the digital resource."

Baraniuk said OpenStax College's print edition prices are already exceptionally low - about $30-$54. He said the NACS agreement will allow OpenStax College to lower prices by about 2 percent next year. Beyond the per-copy drop in prices, Baraniuk said the NACS agreement will also save students money by reducing how much OpenStax College has to pay for shipping.