Digital Textbooks outsell Paper Books, Amazon says

The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper.

Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers take advantage of the popularity of tablets like the Kindle and iPad, expanding their catalogues and offering products like rental digital books that expire after a semester or two.

The potential for digital growth is leading publishers to experiment with products that stretch the boundaries of traditional textbooks, slowly turning away from static text and images toward a multimedia, intuitive approach, publishers say.

“Textbooks as e-books ought to be seen as a stepping stone to the future,” said Mark Majurey of Taylor & Francis, a textbook publisher in Britain.

Digital textbooks are any books that can be downloaded to an e-reader or computer or those that can be read online using a Web browser. While no one keeps precise numbers of digital textbook sales globally, a number of companies have seen similar growth patterns and nearly identical market share.

According to the Student Monitor, a private student market research company based in New Jersey, about 5 percent of all textbooks acquired in the autumn in the United States were digital textbooks. That is more than double the 2.1 percent of the spring semester. Read More

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Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com

"Crazy U" - A Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College

The New York Times

The admissions process, as Andrew Ferguson puts it in his new book, “Crazy U”, entangles not just our pocketbooks but everything else that, besides world peace and cocktail hour, matters to parents: “our vanities, our social ambitions and class insecurities, and most profoundly our love and hopes for our children.” This is a must read!

Mr. Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, and he’s a valiant guide through this emotional territory. He’s got a big, beating heart, but he tucks it behind a dry prose style that owes a little bit to Mark Twain and Tom Wolfe — to name the first two white-suited writers who come to mind — and also to Dave Barry (who I suspect wears Dockers).


He made me laugh early, and often. Why do high school kids look so disoriented on SAT day? It’s not the test. It’s that their cellphones have been pried from their clammy fingers. “None of them had gone four hours without sending a text message,” Mr. Ferguson writes, “since middle school.”

“Crazy U” is a chronicle of Mr. Ferguson’s attempts to help place his son, who is 16 when this mini-odyssey begins, in a decent college. Mr. Ferguson’s boy (he is never named) is only an average student, and his father fears for him in a process that’s become a nationwide talent hunt favoring teenage extroverts and self-marketers. “I wasn’t sure,” he writes, “my son had the personality for it.” He means that as a compliment. Read More

I'm Ron Denaro and thanks for joining College Campus Chatter today!

Ron Denaro is the president of College Campus Trips, a tour company providing high school students with tours of college campuses, nationwide. For more information, call (954) 567-5751 or e-mail: ron@collegecampustrips.com