CafeScribe

College Students Could Save a Tree Per Year Using E-Textbooks

College students purchase about a tree per year in textbooks according to the founder of CaféScribe.com, a site that sells e-Textbooks at half the cost of standard textbooks. According to the CaféScribe study, a student starting school this fall using digital textbooks rather than their more expensive counterparts would save nearly 50,000 sheets of paper -- enough to preserve six trees -- over the course of 4-years at a university.

August 1, 2007 (SALT LAKE CITY) – An analysis published today by CaféScribe (http://www.cafescribe.com), a web site that offers digital versions of popular textbooks at half the price of regular textbooks, asserts that the average college student buys over a tree's worth of textbooks during the course of a school year. As universities prepare to begin the 2007-2008 school year in the midst of widely publicized criticism of the high cost of textbooks, the CaféScribe analysis suggests that buying e-books would not only save students an average of close to $2,000 over four years, it would conserve six trees.

The e-Textbook company's figures assume that the average student buys between 17 and 18 books per year at an average cost of $52 and an average length of 715 pages. Ecological advocacy groups have estimated that a single tree is equal to between 16 and 17 reams of paper, or about 8,300 pages. In addition, e-book versions of popular textbooks average half the cost of new textbooks and a third less than used textbooks.

“Looking back at my school career, I'm horrified at how many dead trees I was responsible for,” laughs Bryce Johnson, CEO of Fourteen40, the parent company of CaféScribe and himself a veteran of undergraduate and MBA degrees (about 9 trees-worth of schooling). “E-books make sense on so many levels – they're cheaper, more flexible, and better for the environment. They're a lot easier to carry in your backpack as well. Web 2.0 means that the era of digital content is with us to stay: CaféScribe is proud to introduceTextbooks 2.0.”

CaféScribe.com, which is still in in the beta stage of launch, plans to offer a broad selection of e-textbooks by fall along with a social network of online study groups to make reading books and sharing notes faster and more efficient for students. CaféScribe also allows individuals to publish, share, and annotate their own PDF documents.

About CaféScribe
Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, CaféScribe.com is part of Fourteen40, Inc., a technology company dedicated to helping people share knowledge more efficiently. The company recently received its second round of venture funding from SBI Ventures. The CEO, Bryce Johnson, was himself a student not long ago. In the evenings he likes to read e-books to his kids.

Dead Trees By The Numbers

• 715 - total number of pages in average textbook*
• 8,333.3 - number of sheets of paper derived from a single tree**
• 11.6 - number of textbooks printed from one, 40-foot dead tree
• 17.3 - average textbooks bought per student, per-year, or 69.2 textbooks over 4 years of college***
• 1.5 - number of trees felled to make the textbooks used by a single college student in the US every year
• 626,000 - tons of paper used in book production in the US each year****
• 69.2 books, 49,478 pages, 5.9 trees - amount of books, paper, and trees used to make the textbooks used by a single college student over 4 years
• 50,000 - projected 2007-2008 enrollment for Ohio State University*****
• 74,548 - estimated number of trees felled in the production of textbooks used by students enrolled at Ohio State for the 2007-2008 school year
• 425,580 - textbooks used by freshman starting at Ohio State this fall by the time they graduate in 2012 ( 36,687 trees-worth)
• 17.6 million - estimated US college enrollment in fall of 2006******
• 24.6 million -- number of trees felled to make all the textbooks used by U.S. students this year.

* - CaféScribe estimate. See table below.
** - Conservatree.org
*** - Based on (conservative) estimate of student textbooks costs of $700-1,000 per annum ("Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable," a report by the Federal Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance) at $52 per book (www.textbookfacts.org, Association of American Publishers).
**** - Woodwise.org
***** - "Ohio State University is Largest Campus In Nation" (Ohio State press release)
****** - National Center for Education Statistics

Average Textbook Length, an estimate:

Below are a handful of sample of titles used to try to estimate average number of pages in a textbook. Obviously the length of these books varies greatly, as does the number of textbooks assigned and purchased. A student in the sciences, for example, could be expected to purchase fewer books, most of which will be lengthy, whereas an English major might purchase dozens of individual novels with many fewer pages on average.

1. W.H. Freeman,Chemical Principles The Quest for Insight Third Edition, 1,024 pages
2. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition by American Psychological Association, 439 pages
3. Machiavelli: The Prince (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), 192 pgs.
4. Pharmacotherapy Principles & Practice (Hardcover) , 1,600 pages
5. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures, A Handbook (Paperback), 508 pages.
6. Black's Law Dictionary 7th Edition (Black's Law Dictionary) (Hardcover), 1,738 pages
7. Gilbert Law Summaries on Property, 17th (Paperback) , 595 pages
8. Wills, Trusts and Estates Including Taxation and Future Interests (2nd Edition) (Hornbook Series and Other Textbooks) (Hardcover), 790 pages [available on CafeScribe]
9. Leslie and Sterk's Trusts and Estates, 269 pages [available on CafeScribe]
10. Business Planning: Closely Held Enterprises (Paperback), 764 pages

Average length: 715 pages

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