Raccoon underwhelmed by iChapters textbook service: Agree or disagree?
iChapters, which lets students download textbook chapters, gets a knock from TeleBlog contributor Rochelle Hartman, author of the Tinfoil and Raccoon blog. She heartily dislikes the terms of terms of service and other aspects. “Downloads are a six-month lease that expires,” Rochelle tells me. “If you need book for two semesters, you pay for it twice or lose the lease. You have to authenticate every 60 days or lose lease. No right click, and the usual bunch of DRM hoo-ha.” I’ll e-mail an iChapters person for the company’s side, but meanwhile I’d love to hear from others who’ve tried the service and have opinions one way or another.
Technorati Tags: iChapters,iChapters.com
February 8th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
The iChapters approach reaffirms an idea which I think is more workable, especially for college textbooks written outside of the major publishers.
This idea is simple: Put the books freely online, and allow anyone to access them for free, with the license requirement that if a college department uses the textbook in a class, the department pays a per-student use fee, such as $5 or $10 per student.
I’ve been considering this as a business venture. I believe this model may also work as a non-profit in the K-12 sector, especially targeting private schools and homeschoolers – the books could be authored using a wiki approach so they are always up-to-date.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I was solicited via email by ichapter’s marketing company, after they read my Kindle post. They wanted me to promote ichapters as a great application for ebooks. The person who sent the email also touted their “buy a book and we’ll plant a tree” promotion.” I did the courtesy of looking at the site, which made it look like a pretty sweet alternative to heavy, expensive text books. Then I started digging deeper and found the Terms of Service. Not so sweet….. To be fair, I did not compare prices of etexts vs. ptexts, but if you lug around a heavy, $$ textbook, you can usually re-coup a bit of your original outlay at the end of the semester. I am, indeed, very curious to hear about anyone’s experience, as I’ll have a college-bound raccoon in 2009.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I have bought my textbooks from iChapters for a while. All in all I find them cheaper. The price of the eBooks is always much cheaper than the printed texts, and the difference is enough to make up for the lease. Last semester I bought a printed marketing textbook for $150 which I sold for $4.50. the iChapters price was $70 for the semester lease so I would not have lost money if I’d gone the other way.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I am angry that no one is factoring in the true environmental cost of a ptext vs. etext. This is as stupid as complaining about low gas prices. A printed text is made from dead trees that are converted into paper through a highly toxic process. Ink is not a clean material either. The books must then be shipped to the store and ostensibly you will drive there to get them. In addition - thousands of extra copies of those books will be printed out. These will go to waste. THIS is the true cost of a printed book. I’ve never dealt with iChapters but hearing of their environmental commitment and the “plant a tree” deal I am sure that I will in the future.
February 1st, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I bought a ebook from iChapters this semester when I realized I forgot to buy one of my textbooks the day before class. Oops! I searched a dozen or so textbook comparison sites. The iChapters ebook was within a dollar of the semester rental price for several textbook rental websites. Since you’re not actually buying the ebook but just renting it for 180 days, the only advantage to the ebook over the textbook is instant delivery. However, if I had had the time, I would have just rented the physical book for the same price and not have to lug my laptop to class.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I am not sure that most homeschool parents would go for this iChapter idea since most texts are re-used for multiple children. It would be much more economical to buy a used text and then resell it when they are done.