A collaborative formed by the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Education created the "Digital Textbook Playbook," a tool that can be used by all schools to go digital. Released in February 2012, this book acknowledges that “cost management is fundamental to making the successful transition to digital learning,” but it also explains that implementing the technology changes can cost from $250 per student to more than $1,000 per student per year as measured on a 4-year refresh cycle and depending on what devices and texts are used.
Schools must now decide how to get the money to pay for the change. In January 2009, federal Title 1 and Ohio state educational technology grant funds allowed the Lorain Ohio City School District to lease Dell notebooks. The district reported significant cost savings. For the 2,600 math books needed for ninth through 12th grade, the paper textbook cost was estimated at $182,000, or $70 per book. The e-textbook cost was $15,000, or approximately $5.77 per book. An English textbook purchase was priced at $163,673.05; however, the digital version only cost the district $36,554.45. The drawback with the Lorain program is that the e-readers stay in school in the digital laboratory, and the children don’t have a book or reader to take home.
Students in California’s Campbell Union High School District’s pilot program, also started in 2009, take readers home. The Sony Corporation supplied the district e-readers for about $200 each for use in English classrooms, where print textbook and novel costs for one class could exceed $180. Parents pay for the e-reader, but the district supplies the digital texts and access to other sources, supplying free downloads for literature now in the public domain. The district doesn’t give the final cost savings but says they were substantial and negotiations are ongoing with publishers for digital textbook access.
In a pilot project completed at Florida’s Daytona State College, “many students who bought e-textbooks saved only $1 per book, compared with their counterparts who purchased traditional printed materials,” according to "The Chronicle of Higher Education." Conversely, students in an Indiana University pilot project involving 5,300 students in 130 class sections saved an average $25 per book by using an e-textbook. Another study, completed at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, concluded that “the e-version of many texts is often only 5 percent to 10 percent cheaper than traditional textbooks.” That study also noted that a 4-month rental of a textbook could cost 50 percent less than purchasing a new book and be cheaper than a digital book.
In the fall of 2010, California’s Grossmont College Bookstore completed a comparison of paper textbooks and e-readers. Surprisingly, one of the results of that study was buying a used paper textbook and selling it back to the school bookstore could be cheaper than getting the textbook on an e-reader. That survey caused a lot of schools to rethink their book policies and push for better and cheaper delivery of e-reader services to their students.