I recall Texas Instruments stopped printing data sheets and data books for its electronic parts about 12 year ago. Everything had been available as PDF files on the web for several years already. This has saved lots of shelf space in engineering cubicles.
You're confusing the container and the contents.
The "book" is the contents. Print, e-book, audiobook? They're all just containers to hold the contents.
As to whether print editions are dead: textbooks are notoriously expensive, both to buy and to produce. They have relatively small print runs, so the cost per unit is higher than more popular books. It's sad that this one publisher has decided to take this step: not everyone can afford to have an e-reader or other device, and not everyone can read books on such devices, so they are going to exclude some of their market.
There have been several discussions about this elsewhere on AW. You might like to search for them.
I'm thinking that textbooks are SO expensive that the cost of an e-reader isn't that great in comparison. Also, since students (presumably) can't trade "used" e-copies, the publisher has a captive market. This could be bad in they can set the price at whatever they want, but I'd hope since it pretty much guarantees a sale to every student rather that losing substantial sales to the used market, the price per copy could be substantially lower.
I'm thinking you don't necessarily need a dedicated e-reader. Does anyone really attend college without a computer thesedays? I've got the free Kindle reader program on my computer for a few books I haven't been able to get in print or any other format.
Wish you'd told me this last week, I just bought a new bookcase...
Books aren't the media they're on. When writers figure that out (readers already have...), the hysteria will die down.
Jeff
I'm still MAKING bookcases, and even changing the size design based on need. My goal to be able to move all my bookcases loaded - a 6-foot tall, 14-inch wide case loaded with Byte and similar-size magazines weighs about 250 lbs. Moving it horizontally on a hand truck is doable, but pulling it up steps almost isn't. I should go back to the gym.
I don't usually frequent this section but I just had to pop in here to ask: why? Textbooks are continually updated. Last year's edition is quickly outdated. So it makes sense if they can go electronic because of that.
You might think so, but a lot of the subject material does NOT change. I went to EE school in the late 1970s and there's been no "advcances" in DC and AC circuit analysis in close to a century, since Steinmetz applied complex numbers to the problem.
What changes is after a few years sales drop off as more and more students buy used copies. So all of a sudden there's a new Seventh Edition published with a few changes or additions in the example problems and maybe a new chapter, it's The Edition the professor assigns for the class, and instantly the Sixth Edition isn't worth the paper it's printed on. But older textbooks are still good cheap material for self-study.