Oak Brook, Ill.  - Follett Higher Education Group today announced a new program to address the rising costs of education by offering thousands of digital college textbook titles to students and faculty on a free-trial basis. 

The Try Now, Buy Later 2010 program is available exclusively through Follett's new CafeScribe eBook platform, which is an online social networking site that makes it easy to evaluate, download and use digital textbooks. By visiting www.cafescribe.com, students and professors can download and use, for seven days, more than 5,000 titles for free.

Once downloaded, CafeScribe provides students the ability to read, search, highlight, bookmark and annotate the e-textbooks, as well as share notes and discuss topics with peers in their classroom and with students around the world.

After the trial period, the student (or professor) can purchase the title at a 30 to 50 percent savings over the cost of a traditional textbook. All of the annotations made in the digital textbook during the trial period remain intact, and unlike other e-textbook sources, the digital textbook is the user's to keep.

"Almost all of my students are using the e-textbook option," says Brigham Young University Sports Psychology Professor Ron Chamberlain. "CafeScribe makes so much sense in so many ways – economically, environmentally, and logistically – it is a user-friendly format and convenient for the students to use."

The Try Now, Buy Later program also helps students start the semester on the right foot when a textbook they need is temporarily out of stock. With digital, textbooks are always in stock.

Follett tested the CafeScribe Try Now, Buy Later program during the fall 2009 semester and found high levels of interest and adoption of digital textbooks. Because of enthusiastic word of mouth, the company is preparing for much heavier adoption during its official launch in the January 2010 semester. It takes just one click to Try Now, Buy Later.