Textbooks should be replaced by electronic books Essay

Textbooks should be replaced by electronic books - Essay Example It will provide empirical evidence in support of this line of thinking. With the advent of technology, Americans consumers particularly the students can find relevant academic material at their fingertips. Electronic books allow people to access any book at any time and place. In addition, it is cheap to produce electronic compared to paper books. The reason is that it allows publishers to produce and distribute these books at a fractional cost compared to the latter. Many Americans would not have believed that gramophones would be replaced with tapes and payphones by portable cell phones to name a few. Today, most magazine publishers have moved away from print media and currently produce their magazine entirely as materials viewable in e-readers (Conway, 2010). Below is an analysis on the benefits of electronic books over textbooks. First, electronic books are cheaper relative to paper books. In the US, the average price of a textbook is about $8. However, one can still get that same material for $3 on a kindle. In additional, production of paper books involves the cutting down of trees and hence resulting to environmental degradation. Adoption of electronic books would ensure the conservation of the environment and reading will become easier. Secondly, electronic books are so accessible and as a result, they have become very popular in the recent years. Instead of waiting for the delivery of a book shopped online, one can purchase and download an e-book within no time (Polatron, 2009). Additionally, they are less cheap since the publishers do not have to add any production cost. For this reason, electronic books are a great alternative to textbooks. Thirdly, Proponent of electronic books argues that both students and teachers support them since they are lighter and hence convenient to use. Electronic books can hold the material of close to hundred or more