This is the first in a two-part series examining the future of textbooks.

Textbook sales at the Cornell Store are down at least 5 percent from last fall, as strapped Cornellians are increasingly choosing cheaper alternatives for their books. It remains to be seen how the Cornell Store, which has seen lowered profits from textbook sales throughout the last five years, will adapt to an industry that is in an uncertain state of flux.

Many students, such as Sarah Erickson ’09, turned to Amazon.com to save money. “Buying my books online saved me $75,” Erickson said, adding that shopping online “was easier and allowed me to buy my books in advance.”

Andrew Boryga ’09 saved $100 through renting his books for a semester on the “really simple, cheap and convenient” website chegg.com. One freshman, requesting anonymity for fear of legal ramifications, said that he saved $180 on his math textbook by illegally downloading it for free off the Internet.

Yet, dissatisfied students are not the only ones rebelling against the classical print-and-buy system. University of Toronto Computer Science professor and Cornell alumnus Paul Gries ’92, MEng ’94 is at the center of an effort to economize the textbook industry through electronic textbooks. Gries believes that e-books’ production costs are “next to nothing” and they are replacing the old textbooks. Gries himself is writing an electronic, fully hyperlinked textbook of his own.

“The way students study has drastically changed,” Gries opined. “They now only skim their textbooks — the e-book is much better suited to today’s student.”

He adds that e-books will “allow teachers to mix and match sections from various textbooks [and] customize them.” He also believes that the progression to electronic textbooks will make the Cornell Store “pointless,” because students will be able to simply buy their books online.

Still, Margie Whiteleather, the Cornell Store’s strategic products manager, insists that the 114-year-old store will remain competitive for the foreseeable future. She credits some of the downward trajectory to factors other than Internet alternatives, including “the decreased number of titles [assigned for classes by] professors aware of the high cost of books.”

Whiteleather holds that, “the fact that [books on Amazon.com are cheaper] is largely a perception.”

To combat price differences, the Cornell Store bought an unprecedented 40,000 used books, which now make up 36 percent of their total collection. Whiteleather said that the “jury is out” on a current proposal to implement a rental system within the University; some estimates, however, suggest that this system would take “around six years for the school to make back the investment on the books.” Although this would save students an estimated 33 to 45 percent, no teacher, Whiteleather said, would accept being bound to a set course booklist for six years.

As for electronic books, Whiteleather says that out of the 20 adopted by the store for this fall, none sold particularly well. Even though Whiteleather said that savings on e-books ran up to 55 percent, students seemed to prefer buying the hard copies, contrary to Gries’ prediction.

Whiteleather also stressed that the Cornell Store provides amenities that the competing online merchandisers cannot.

“We offer overwhelming advantages in accuracy, security and convenience,” Whiteleather said, focusing in on the personal aspects of attending the physical store.

Leroy Howard ’09 agreed with these sentiments, citing the store’s ability to provide papers “written in-house by hotel professors.”

“I had trouble figuring out what edition to buy on Amazon,” Scott Bergman ’09 said. “It would’ve been much easier to get at the Cornell Store.”

None of the professors contacted by The Sun for this article were aware that the Cornell Store is selling electronic books. Regardless, none of them raised objections to the store’s decision.

“Overall, since it saves our natural resources, I think the e-book is a fine idea,” said Prof. David Field, psychology, whose students from his class Psychology 3420 can buy an e-book for his class.

Prof. Kenneth Birman, computer science, concurs.

“I’ve noticed no change in my students’ work [when using the e-book, an electronic version of the hard-copy,]” Birman said. He added that he looks forward to see what the e-book can provide in five years when it is written for computers.

Dan Farchione ’09 calls for extreme “piracy on a mass scale” from the Internet to hurt the textbook industry, which, in his opinion, “exploits [students] with no ramifications.” But even short of such drastic action, nobody is sure what the future of the textbook industry holds in store.