Students will learn if printed material is tied to media material. New Media Books is currently beta testing with five colleges to see how students and professors respond to the devices. Williams believes that New Media Books' model of combining print and new media will gain faster acceptance than e-books will on campus. I'm not sure students, authors, and professors are ready for that. The education market, while excited about new electronic reading and publishing devices, has been slow to adopt them because of economic concerns.
Technology is an additional barrier to e-book acceptance.
Some textbooks demand color displays that are not currently available on e-book readers. But Sachs thinks that cost will become less of a barrier as technology develops. Publishers and authors have been reluctant to digitize material because of copyright and profit concerns. When publishers start seeing profits they will change their minds very soon. But Greenblatt said that with the increase in online learning opportunities, traditional publishers are already starting to turn over their books for electronic distribution.