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.”

Buying textbooks at the start of every semester has become significantly cheaper for the hundreds of students across the country who have taken advantage of Skoobit.com.

Skoobit is an online textbook rental company that enables students to potentially save money by renting, as opposed to buying, their textbooks. Textbooks can represent a large chunk of the cost of higher education and it can be exasperating for students to spend hundreds of dollars per book, only to turn around and sell it at the end of the semester for only a fraction of the purchase price.

Gripping their freshly printed booklists, returning and first-year students frantically run through the shelves of the Cornell Store each semester. Anxious and ready to tackle a new set of classes, students flood tiny red shopping carts with books and study materials. After glancing at the yellow tab of class readings, many are surprised to find that the professors teaching their classes and the authors of the required books share the same name.

All professors who write books make royalties from the books they sell to their students. It is what they do with these royalties that has sparked debate in academic circles: Is it unethical for professors to keep the money earned from the books they assign to their own students?