<p>I'm a recent high school graduate attending a public university in the fall. I was wondering, would it be worth it to purchase a Nook/Kindle/similar device to buy textbooks on? Is it common for college textbooks to be available in e-book format? I know e-books tend to cost less than regular textbooks, but I don't want to pay $100-200 for an e-reader unless the money I'd actually save on textbooks would make up for it. There's also the issue of convenience--I've heard from some people that traditional books are easier to study out of e-books. Is this true? </p>
<p>Thanks for your help!</p>
<p>Personally, I could not study with an e-book. It may be different for you, but there is absolutely no way I would choose an e-book over a regular textbook.</p>
<p>As far as price goes, generally e-books are NOT that much cheaper than traditional textbooks. On top of barely being discounted (may $10-20), you can’t sell them back, lend them to a friend, etc. Sometimes the e-books even have a time limit on them, meaning they will be deleted from your device after a certain time period (so it is more like renting.) You also need to consider what you will do if your device fails.</p>
<p>On the plus side, they are much lighter to carry around.</p>
<p>Not all textbooks are available for the nook/kindle. </p>
<p>I have used e-books and while they were ok, I would have rather had the hard copy. </p>
<p>As far as the savings go it all depends. On the book I bought I saved maybe $25.00.</p>
<p>Also some books expire after a certain period of time and some books do come helpful in other classes. </p>
<p>The only reason why I bought the e-book in the first place is a registered for the class late and the bookstore was sold out.</p>
<p>I never found a single Kindle-ready textbook version (RTF, EPUB, Mobipocket, etc.) but I did find (and use) many iPad versions. But my Kindle was absolutely worth it for reading books that weren’t textbooks.</p>
<p>Many of my professors uploaded the readings in the form of PDFs, so my Kindle was extremely useful. I still prefer to use textbooks (especially for courses with charts and diagrams), but if a professor just wants you to read a chapter or section of a book, it’s nice to save on paper. Plus, Kindles and Nooks are great if you have to travel a lot to get to and from your college.</p>
<p>I got a nook as a gift for college and I don’t really use it much at all. I would not spend the money.</p>
<p>I gave in and bought a tablet for Christmas. I bought it for productivity in order to take notes and read. After the past semester I learned that I still prefer writing in notebooks and reading from textbooks.</p>
<p>Now I will probably just use it as consumption device, which means it will never get used - I have only used it once this summer.</p>
<p>My $0.02. It all depends on your preference, though.</p>
<p>Oh and buying used books and reselling them is generally cheaper than renting or buying on the kindle. edit: I also agree that it is a great device in order to read for leisure.</p>
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<p>Then don’t. Just buy a generation or two old Kindle (non-Fire) and make use of the plethora of books available for free due to public domain, your local library, or any of the tons of books that go on sale either for free or for less than $1 every day at Amazon.</p>
<p>That depends. Personally, I wouldn’t use a kindle for my textbooks. I like traditional textbooks for studying out of, because of the ease of flipping back and forth between pages. You can put bookmarks in on important pages…highlight stuff if you want to(personally I’m a stickler about not writing in my textbooks), and reference them more easily. Kindles have some advantages I suppose…and yes, you can bookmark and highlight in a kindle, but to me it just isn’t the same. </p>
<p>From a financial standpoint, it can end up costing more to buy ebooks. You don’t have the option of selling an ebook back after you’re done with it, and they don’t really cost much less than the traditional books to begin with. From what I’ve seen, if the textbook costs $120, the ebook will be $90-100. You can sell the textbook back at the end of the semester though, and recoup at least a portion of that money. Ebooks don’t offer that option. Many ebooks are actually a rental format too, and get deleted after a certain length of time. Realistically, if you buy textbooks online rather than in a school bookstore, the actual books will usually end up costing even less than the ebook anyway. Plus, there’s always the possibility of the kindle/nook failing…and then you’re struck. Textbooks don’t have that problem.</p>
<p>On the plus side though, it is a lot easier to carry around a kindle than a stack of textbooks. If you do a lot of recreational reading, a kindle would definitely be worth it. I wouldn’t recommend it for textbooks though.</p>
<p>You are not going to like ebooks for schoolwork. I tried a kindle for a semester and it was very difficult to use, as any time we were in class and referencing a certain page number, or I had to reference anything in particular, I had to struggle to keep up. The kindles system, imo, is not advanced enough to keep up with people who are using real books. Even flipping through pages at home to study is a pain. And you can’t sell them back, so whatever you spent you are stuck with-- I usually bought my books on amazon and then sold them back and broke just about even, some semesters I profited. </p>
<p>I love my kindle for pleasure reading and wouldn’t be caught without it, but I didn’t have time for that in college.</p>