Textbooks can also be thought of as essential goods: regardless of the cost, students are required to buy them if they wish to succeed in a class. So, why have textbook prices been able to increase so dramatically? Currently, five companies control around 80% of the textbook publishing market.

This figure is incredibly concerning when coupled with the troubling trend of increasing costs to higher education overall. This means since the late 70s, textbook prices have on average increased around 1,000%. The cost of textbooks has increased long past the rate of inflation in the United States, the average college student will spend $1,200 a year on textbooks. On average, textbooks can cost students thousands of dollars a year in addition to already rising tuition costs. Between astronomical textbook costs and inaccessible academia, Z-library and other websites like it, have acted as the band-aid on a bullet hole. My true frustration, however, lies with the reasons Z-library needed to exist in the first place. By many of us students, the shut down of Z-library is being referred to as the “Burning of the Modern Library of Alexandria.” As a former user of Z-library myself, I understand the frustration over the loss of this free and convenient resource. This made it an essential tool for students who wanted or needed to avoid massive textbook costs. While it was still operational, Z-library was the world’s largest digital library and pirated books from every genre. What led to the arrest of the creators and site runners Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova is unconfirmed, but social media speculation has placed the blame on TikTok creators who offered tutorials which highlighted the site’s existence. 3, the FBI officially shut down Z-library, a website that offered over 11 million books and 84 million articles for free.

Z library online