At my school students were given a loan of secondhand textbooks for a year. No-one had to buy textbooks.
At University we had to buy textbooks, but students ran an unofficial operation reselling commonly used texts to next years students for a much reduced price.
I have no idea what happens today with ebook texts, but it should be possible to do something similar.
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For my first degree at uni, I was working and going on day release with the other aprentis, he was the year above me. Books were expensive so the company bought the 2 compulsory text books and the idea we shared depending on need. But it never worked as the subjects for each year were the same so we both needed the same book at the same time, caused us all sorts of problems. I needed monday, he needed tuesday and hard to pass on, but homework was easy as wednesday thursday we did the homework together during work time. Friday the teacher was also our boss (part time lecturer) so he went through it before handing in.
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That is 100% the main reason I prefer e-books to paper…
I actually ramp the font size up - and brightness down, and white text on black background… I find it easier on my eyes…
i.e. I go “dark mode” wherever I can as vast areas of white hurt my eyes…
When I thought I was going to have to read my Sholokhov paperback - I got a page magnifier - but that was cumbersome so I persevered with the scanned image of each page e-book I found on The Internet Archive…
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You might name me crazy, but I’ll edit every e-book when before it enters my calibre library.
Usually, I adjust the font, font-size and -color, line-height and the margins.
My eyes are thankful for that. 
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Did not know you could do that, I wait till its on my kindle then adjust if needed
I don’t know whether this is possible with Kindle format books. But an epub is, simplified, a ZIP archive containing a bunch of HTML files and style sheets.
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It’s not… They’re DRM and encrypted… I have - in the past - where the last 2 books in a pentalogy were only available for Kindle - purchased them - then used my work Windows 10 laptop (because I had no other Windows systems) to decrypt them - convert them to un-DRM epub format - but - what a pain! I think it was standalone exe file or something… But it worked…
My e-reader back then was a Kobo Aura - and you can’t do Kindle (or Google, or Apple) e-books on there - just stuff purchased through Rakuten/Kobo - or un-DRM epub (I managed them in Calibre). This locked in ecosystem is why I switched back to using an iPad (mini 6") to read e-books… And using a more multi-purpose device - means I can e.g. jump to Safari and look at a map - or open a bitmap image of a map of some fictional place…
I remember there was supposed to be some plugin for Calibre that would decrypt DRM ebooks - but I NEVER got it to work…
This Reddit post is about Calibre on “PC” (i.e. Windows) : https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1c2ryfz/2024_guide_to_dedrm_kindle_books/
Yup! I posted something elsewhere on here recently about using the “recode” utility to replace “diacritics” on vowels (with plain latin vowels) in an epub file (Recode utility - CLI)…
I sometimes also unzip epub files to extract things like maps - as I find it nearly impossible to flip back and forth between a map, and the narrative…
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Hello Friends
I back since long time ago, my 2 cents
Paperback
Advantages
- Valuable when I have a blackout, when is raining
- When I need take a rest my eyes of a computer (when the eyes are tired due a lot of “monitor screen”)
Disadvantages
- Is not quick to do a search
- Take space, mandatory have a bookshelf
- Portability
- No much space to write comment(s)
- The paper is harmed when a comment needs an update
- Impossible to put colors in the paragraph without harm the paper itself
eBook
Advantages
- Quick to do a search
- Do not take space
- Portability
- Easy to write comment(s)
- Possible to update any comment(s) any time
- For any comment is possible apply any format as either bold or italic
- Possible to put colors in the paragraph
Disadvantages
- Easy to get tired the eyes
- Some times the file itself can be corrupted and it is lost (mandatory do a backup)
Best to all
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The disadvantage of your eyes getting tired disappear when you use a ereader which uses epaper as a display.
The advantages of epaper are that there’s no backlight, while the text is still readable, and the pixels don’t flash. They’re some form of “solid-state pixels”, so changing their state takes a while (about the time it takes to turn a page).
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It’s great technology epaper
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Do you mean E-Ink displays?
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Yes you are correct with the term.
I got the 2 the wrong way round.
Here they talk more about the paper white
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