CourseSmart and eTextbooks

The one option that weighs heavily on every college student's mind is the purchasing of textbooks. Well as freedom to information increases and new innovations are made students are giving more options than the standard on campus, off campus bookstores and websites such as Amazon that charge exorbitant prices for books that can be returned at the end of the semester for a fraction of what you paid. The solution to this can be seen in the concept of CourseSmart, which offers its users books for a severe discount. Though users do not receive physical textbooks, they are able to access the book and all of it's contents for a period of about 6 months. One example that I was able to witness was a textbook of mine that was about $76 on Amazon brand new versus $39 on CourseSmart. The draw back to this site can be seen in the infancy of its creation. The website is a mere two and a half years old and only has collections from about fourteen publishers. Though this is a slight disadvantage, I do see this site becoming helpful in the classes that a user will not require the textbook after the class is over.