As the textbook industry adapts to the digital age, it is harnessing technology in a search for solutions to perennial frustrations over high costs.
Most stakeholders agree that the future of textbooks is electronic, but their motives and methods are different.
Publishers are pushing digital versions of their products - which maintain profits lost to the used book market and show sympathy to student concerns - while activists and increasingly more professors are advocating open-source textbooks, which are available for free online and can be printed for low costs.
Book loan programs, online resellers and other alternatives to buying books at retail price have intensified over the last decade, often offering students significant savings.
But current solutions are far from perfect. Used book supplies are sometimes narrow and hard to navigate - and the option is obsolete if professors require new versions or extras, like CD-ROMs and workbooks.
Though used book prices are lower, they are still a burden on most student budgets.
"Even if you reduce a $200 textbook by half, it's still expensive," said Nicole Allen, director of the student activist-run Make Textbooks Affordable campaign.
She said the best short-term solutions to high textbook prices are encouraging professors to choose cheaper texts or hold on to older editions and establishing forums to rent and swap books.
But Allen and other activists say that to rein in prices in the long run, the industry must embrace the growing open-book movement.
Open-source books are available online and are often openly licensed. This lets individuals use, edit and print them without expressed permission. Writers may also receive profit for their work.
Proponents say open books will enable high quality, low-cost options to enter the market, making books more affordable and putting competitive pressure on publishers to lower their prices.
For instance, Allen said, a popular economics open book written by a Caltech professor fed up with costs can be ordered in print for $11 - nearly $150 less than the typical price of leading traditional books on the topic.
"Anger is escalating, but there has not been a viable, easy alternative without decreasing the quality of the learning experience," said Eric Frank, co-founder of Internet start-up Flat World Knowledge, which offers open textbooks to students and professors.
The primary concern about open textbooks is ensuring quality without commercial publishers' rigorous review process or financial incentives for authors.
But Allen said her campaign promotes open books that are reviewed by faculty - and that their use at top-tier schools like Harvard and Yale represents their viability.
She added that open books differ from electronic versions of commercial publishers' textbooks, which are too expensive and restrictive, with limits on printing and access codes that expire after the semester is over. Open books, on the other hand, start digitally but let students choose their mode of consumption.
That's a big selling factor, because while major publishers now offer about 5,000 of their titles electronically, only 5 percent of textbook spending goes toward digital books, according to market research firm Student Monitor.
Business Services spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger said Penn Bookstore offers digital versions of books whenever publishers provide them but that students overwhelmingly prefer print to pixels.
Bryce Johson, whose Cafescribe Web site lets students buy e-books they can annotate, highlight and discuss online, said e-books will become more popular as "screen-agers" - who grew up in front of televisions and computers - enter college.
Most experts agree that the appeal of online reading increases with each generation and improved technology - a slow evolution rather than a quick leap.
"It's a dynamic market right now," Lea-Kruger said. "No one really knows for certain how digital and open sourcing will affect the textbook market, so we're working to educate students and faculty about all of their options."
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