VOL. 05, NO. 10, November 25, 2011 (Mangsir 09, 2068)

By Shradha Gyawali in Utah, USA

Will college book stores ever go out of business? Some might think, yes! Digital books have become one of the most current popular items this year for students across North America. Various companies have recently published statistics providing the idea that paper textbooks won’t be around for much longer.

Some organizations like Student Monitor—a private student market research company based out of New Jersey, has shared that an incredible “5% of all textbooks” bought over the typical fall term within the U.S. were actually digital. “This is more than double the 2.1% of the spring term,” of the same year.

Similarly, Simba Information—a publishing research company—amazingly believes that “electronic textbooks will generate about $267.3 million this year” alone in sales; that is only in the U.S. If Simba Information is correct, this will be a whopping 44.3% over the last year. Another fierce prediction on Simba Information’s part is the belief that digital textbooks will make up 11% of the textbook market revenue by only 2013. The American Association of Publishers says that the college textbook market has already generated a very large “$4.58 billion in sales last year”.

With statements like these, how could large firms not want to jump in on the action? Amazon announced this year that for the first time, their digital books outsold their paper books. Because of this outcome, Amazon will now partner with three other firms and will reduce the renting period to as low as 30 days; then they will expire. This will also lower the price of digital textbooks up to 80% as compared to a brand new paper textbook.

Digital textbooks will not only be changing with expiring textbooks, but also by re-focusing their main targets. Freshman college students will now be a big deal. By focusing on entering college students, digital textbooks will be able to target a wider variety of people while still only focusing on core- class textbooks. This, they hope, will grab a younger audience and keep them to use the digital books throughout their life or at least until their student life.

Two examples of firms which will target this audience range are Chegg (a big-time textbook rental company in the U.S), and CourseSmart (a partnership of five major U.S. textbook publishers). Chegg has only started renting out digital books this year because of the huge possibility that digital books will be popular. CourseSmart, on the other-hand, has just released their plan to take their digital project “overseas this year”. Each company is able to see that this industry is growing, and they both want part of it.

One large factor changing this industry is tablets. The popularity of tablets such as the iPad and Kindle has changed the growth of digital books. Digital books and these tablets complement each other. If the sales for Kindles go up, so will the sales for digital books. A negative look at this is the loss of employment of “middle men” and bookstore owners overtime. An Increase in digital books will contribute greatly to a decrease in paper books; and a decrease in “middle men” jobs.

Either way, digital is the way of the modern world—whether most people like it or not. It is a way to lighten the load of carrying textbooks, and life. It is a way to stop wasting paper in our current environmental- friendly ways. However, can we sacrifice loss of employment for these “goods” of life? 

(Gyawali is at Westminster College Salt Lake City, Utah, majoring in Economics. She is a Sophomore, 2nd year)

By ADITI ARYAL

People were celebrating the new year and bidding goodbye to the old. Restaurants and clubs in the capital were full of people with high spirit. Facebook homepage crammed with night long plans. The next day featured hangover traumas. People did tell us what a nice time they had ‘celebrating’.

Apparently we have become much more extravagant and eager to celebrate than before. The result in the end is that we don’t celebrate, we overexert. We just don’t stay within the boundaries of what would have been a very decent peaceful celebration. We give it that degrading touch to worsen it with over-the-top, unnecessary add-ons.

Grand occasions like weddings and graduations have always been over rated and thus followed by gaudy celebrations. Tales of people struggling financially to pay the expenses to fund such events are not unheard of. On the other hand, a small part of the larger whole have realised the unrequited expenses and moved on to much simpler celebrations, regardless of their material possessions. Most people sadly choose to go with the horde and not the wiser minority. Let alone grand occasions, we tend to make simple things complex too. Simplest of occasions like birthdays or anniversaries gain the superfluous light, again with great expenditures. In addition to that, the invitees are clad in meretricious apparels topped with loud jewellery themselves to go shoulder to shoulder with the event.

Celebrating once in a while is never a problem because with growing westernization, it has become a part of our normal lives. But for many reasons, it looks as if we love to celebrate everything in the wildest way possible, be it birthdays, Christmas or even Dasain! And it is more depressing when the tender youths get enthusiastic with every such celebration and find ways around their families to attend one very often. This in turn plays a major role hampering their mental and emotional status.

Not all families consent to younger members staying away from home at late hours to attend parties, especially if with friends. This then carves the urge in them to find false excuses to get out of the house. Lying and deceiving obviously does increase but this also gives way to delinquent actions like underage drinking or violating vehicular rules. Moreover, the productive time gets wasted along with the vigour.

If it is true that we learn to like what we do, tomorrow will we become one of the overdramatic party organisers and goers looking for reasons just to gulp down the drinks? Will we put our pretentious self forward to dress histrionically and not care about the sentiments of those who cannot afford to do so? While we ourselves criticize the worsening of ‘teej’ by women who earlier merely fasted, how can we then worsen rest of the events ourselves and get away with it ?