E-book survey highlights trends in digital textbook adoption

Ingram Digital’s latest survey with e-book users highlights the key factors behind the surge of digital textbook adoption.

Conducted by Ingram Digital’s Education Solutions unit, data from the survey’s 680 respondents revealed that when deciding whether to purchase a digital title, 47 percent believe that ‘cost in relation to print copies’ is very important. A similar proportion of respondents identified the convenience of e-books (46 percent) and interactive features (45 percent) as also being very important.

‘Our survey shows that while the price of digital textbooks is important to consumers, so are other benefits of e-book technology,’ commented William Chesser, vice president and general manager of Ingram Digital Education Solutions. ‘The VitalSource platform’s student oriented features — such as advanced search, highlighting, annotation and note-sharing — are uniquely aligned with the needs and expectations of consumers, as our sales numbers demonstrate.’

January-May sales for this year surpassed 2007 results by more than 400 percent.