First Textbook Innovation Since Gutenberg
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under News, Techno-file | By Jessica Dye
Kindle’s on fire! Well, kinda…the hand-held digital text device from Amazon just struck a deal with Princeton University Press to start offering a few Kindle-ready e-textbooks for download 2 weeks before paper copies are available. The pros? E-books are cheaper and lighter, and you can fit an entire semester’s worth of books into your bag without a chiropractor’s help. The cons? Picture quality is poor on early models, screen visibility sucks in sunlight, and reading 100+ pages on a tiny screen can get tedious. Amazon is predicting the e-book business will be worth $2.5 billion by 2012, including college sales. We don’t want to get all peer-pressure here, but since the University of California started offering Kindle texts, they’ve reported selling one volume “more than a dozen times in a month,” according to Inside Higher Ed. Yep, they’re just creeping off the e-shelves. Maybe we’ll wait ’til they start selling them in pink…
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As a recent undergraduate and current graduate student, this is outstanding! I have been waiting for the digital textbook, whether downloaded to the laptop/computer or now, downloaded to a device like the Kindle, to take flight.
Students spend so much money on hard copy textbooks and reading materials, and often have to carry them all around which is not convenient or easy to do. Digital textbooks on the Kindle will make it so quick and easy for students to access any of their books or other resources whenever and wherever they need them.
I, myself, am a Kindle champion, and all in all, while $359 for this device plus the cost of the books etc. seems high, you are getting a great deal of value out of it. I can’t wait for the textbooks to be offered for my courses at graduate school.
I recommend this to anyone and everyone, but especially for students considering this good news!
For more info on the Kindle, visit http://www.prokindle.com!
[…] and economic textbooks to undergrads at 15 colleges this fall, free of charge. Innovations such as Amazon’s Kindle and the fledgling TextbookTorrents.com have both made solid attempts to offer textbooks for the […]