That’s the title of an article in edudemic. Here are the first three:
The books they need aren’t available in digital format:
For many students, e-book use isn’t about preference or price, but instead, availability. The books that students need for school are often simply not available in a digital format. Even when certain titles are available digitally, students typically take an all-or-nothing approach to their textbook purchases each semester, buying all of their books at the same location. When so few books are available as e-textbooks, they just don’t bother trying to find them.
They are not as affordable as you might think:
Cutting out the cost of physically producing and shipping a textbook is a money-saver for sure, but a recent study has found that most of the time, that savings does not get passed on to students. In fact, for most students, e-textbooks saved them a whopping $1. What gives? The high cost of e-readers like the iPad and Kindle, “publisher pricing decisions,” and the fact that if students rent e-books, they can’t sell them back later all add up to the surprisingly high cost of e-textbooks.
You can’t lend or resell most e-textbooks:
Unlike printed material, textbooks that are downloaded to your e-reader stay there and don’t go anywhere else. So students who might share a book with their roommate run into difficulty, and those who are accustomed to reselling books at the end of the semester hit a brick wall as well. Students find it hard to deal with these restrictions when they are used to the ease of sharing paper books.
i am a non-traditional student, having returned to get another masters degree 20 years after my first. I have found #1 and #2 to be my biggest deterrants. Many texts are not available on Kindle. Those that are may have up to 20% discount in Kindle format, but since I cannot sell or give them away afterwards, buying used is much more cost effective.