ASU Bookstores recently teamed up with Hewlett-Packard to participate in a pilot service that will bring cheaper textbooks to students.
The Tempe campus bookstore now offers a service called Sun Devil Digital that prints textbooks in the bookstore, said Dennis Mekelburg, associate director of ASU Bookstores.
ASU and HP officials are introducing the service to the public today, though several orders have already been taken.
ASU is one of three universities participating in the pilot program with HP, which manufactures the machines used by the bookstore.
The University of Kansas and Portland State University are the other two universities providing the service. Both universities are premiering the service this semester, along with ASU, Mekelburg said
Sun Devil Digital consists of six machines that work together to rapidly print textbooks in the store. The end result looks identical to textbooks ordered directly from the publishers, he said.
“One of the real advantages here is that if we have that book as a digital file and the publisher has given us permission, we are literally never out of that book,” Mekelburg said.
The bookstore will never run out of certain books and will no longer need to wait for the publisher to ship to their store, he added.
There are three goals the bookstore hopes to accomplish through this new service, he said.
The first goal is to reduce the cost of textbooks for students. They also hope to offer a sustainable process and enable personal publishing, Mekelburg said.
“I think it’s a cheaper way for textbooks to be bought instead of going through the publisher,” marketing sophomore Andrew Reardon said.
Students can save money by purchasing their textbooks that have been printed by the Sun Devil Digital service, Mekelburg said.
The cost of the book is reduced because students no longer have to pay for the cost of shipping, Mekelburg said.
Reardon and communications and Spanish linguistics junior Melissa Campos work the new machines at the Tempe bookstore.
The bookstore has already begun printing and selling books made through the new service and they’ve recently received a large order of about 250 textbooks, Campos said.
Campos and Reardon agree that many students will take advantage of this new, cheaper option of purchasing textbooks.
The bookstore is promoting the new service to professors on campus, so they will begin printing their textbooks in the bookstore instead of using other publishing companies, Mekelburg said.
A few professors have already had their textbooks printed with Sun Devil Digital. It is projected that the new service will be used more frequently in the spring semester, he said.
“We really believe that the pilot will start to pick up in the spring semester and we are hopeful that we will have a lot of titles available here in the store,” Mekelburg said.
The bookstore has to go through a legal process to get the copyright before they can reproduce the textbooks, he said.
Currently, the bookstore is offering a small selection of store-printed textbooks that have mostly been written by ASU professors, Campos said.
“It’s definitely going to open up a lot of opportunities for professors and the bookstore,” Campos said. “It shows we’re here for the students, and it’s a benefit to them.”
Reach the reporter at cottens@asu.edu
