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Apple iBooks: Are They Cheaper than Hardcovers?

LPH

Flight Director
Flight Instructor
Awaking from a nice dream, I shot up and asked, "Are iBooks cheaper for a high school district? How can I calculate this for myself?" Here are some quick calculations:

Hardcovers

Hardcover texts cost as little as $89 per book, some textbooks cost as much as $110 or more. Using the smaller figure, a typical high school student enrolls in 6 classes per year or 24 classes per 4 year attendance. Multiplying 24 classes times $89 costs a school district $2136. Hopefully, the textbook is used over a 7 year period, therefore, divide the text by seven, yielding $305.14.

Over the years, I've learned to figure 10% loss of textbooks (ruined over never returned by the student). Ten percent of 36 books means, on average, four books are lost per high school student. This means the school should calculating spending another $356 for textbooks per student in a four year period.

Adding the initial cost of $305.14 and $356 - total costs may be rounded to $661.

iPads

An iPad 2 will cost $499 and 24 texts would cost $360. Adding these two values gives us a grand total of $859 initial investment per student. If these costs are spread out over seven years, we get a cost of $122.71. Now, I'm not calculating a ten percent loss - I'm not sure to assume a higher or lower number. This would depend on how excited the kids are about keeping the iPad.

How would you do the calculation? What would you change? What do you conclude?
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Robert Heiny

Research Scientist of Learning and Education
Flight Instructor
First I'd assume that someone in the administrtion will require an overhead cost for any such transaction. Without knowing theirs, 10% seems like a good placeholder to add to the cost until the actual district overhead is provided by whoever handles such purchases.

Second, I'd check local used book stores to estimate the number and cost to the school of textbooks they have available. If your textbook library has a 10% loss per year, those books may be sold to someone for cash before they end in up in used book stores.
 
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