No, really.
CafeScribe, a new website devoted to the digital delivery of textbooks for students, announced plans yesterday to launch “the world’s first smelly e-book.”
They commissioned Zogby to undertake a survey of 600 college students and this is what they found:
43% identified smell –- either new book smell or old — as the thing they most love about books as physical objects.
3 in 10 of the surveyed students associated “mustiness” with the books they most loved, although 16% — possibly those most likely to hit the books early in the day – associated best-loved books with the smell of “freshly-ground coffee.”
Oh and 2% said cut grass and 1% said chocolate cake
So how will this work?
CafeScribe will send every student who downloads its software stickers to place on their computers so “they can give their e-books the same musty book smell they know and love from used textbooks – without any of the residual DNA you sometimes find stuck to the pages of used textbooks.”
Yep a musty scratch & sniff.
I am not sure what to make of this. Yes, it is a prime pr play but we are talking textbooks here not older used books. They polled the kids on the books they most loved and you can bet a textbook wasn’t on their list of finalists. A used textbook rarely acquires the musty smell they are trying to recreate.
Another misguided result was this:
The poll also found that “A majority (62%) also preferred purchasing used textbooks over new or electronic textbooks despite the fact that e-textbooks are generally a third less expensive than used textbooks.”
The e-textbook option is too new to be grouped with new textbooks in relation to used textbooks.
The fact that e-textbooks are a third less expensive than even used textbooks should be the rallying cry here and all the money the kids save on getting their textbooks digitally they can go on spend on older copies of their favorite books.
CafeScribe press release
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