... part of the overall publishing market, with just $3.2m (£1.8m) in sales logged by retailers in the third quarter of 2004, the last period for which figures are available, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum.
As with music and movies, part of the issue has been copy protection. Books are not as widely swapped online as are songs and Hollywood films, but it is possible to find hundreds or thousands of titles available for download in file-trading networks, or IRC or through Web sites such as Project Gutenburg, which describes itself as the oldest producer of free e-books on the Internet.
Fear of unrestricted copying has prompted publishers to release their books in formats that are unfamiliar to much of the public, or that hold copying restrictions, such as Adobe's Acrobat or Microsoft's Reader format.
Not an academic question
The textbook publishing world has been moving toward digital sales for several years. For the most part, however, this has come in the form of direct sales to students from the publishers themselves, and has accounted for a small portion of overall sales.
The trial project starting this semester is the first to include multiple publishers and one of the largest textbook wholesalers in the US, MBS Textbook Exchange. The publishers include McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Houghton Mifflin, John Wiley & Sons, Thomson Learning and Sage Publications.
MBS Textbook Exchange, which provides inventory and accounting services as well as wholesale book distribution, developed the card system with input from the publishers and a handful of bookstores, hoping that it and its customers could avoid being cut out of the sales process as digital sales grew.
"Everyone knew there was a need for digital textbooks that's been growing for the last two years or so," said Jeff Cohen, the advertising and promotions manager at MBS Textbook Exchange. "The traditional channel that students use to buy books has been the bookstore, and keeping them in the mix is important, for the bookstores and for us."
Under the programme, students will have a choice between new and used books for a class, or can pick up the card offering...
