Andy Unedited

Exploring Books, Life, and Writing

Saving the Textbook–or Not

by Andy Le Peau

We know the problems with textbooks: stratospheric retail prices that have put the used book market into hyperdrive that has forced publishers to put out new editions more frequently that has pushed retail prices even higher. Who will save us from this cycle of futility?

Will Amazon? It’s trying to with the new Kindle DX. Is this another brilliant Amazon move or a misstep? Laura Dawson says it looks like a miss.

While ebooks are typically priced lower than print books, users expect added features like embedded audio and video, surveys, activities and flash animation–which cost money, and which, by the way, Kindle DX does not support.

And students have laptops already that they use constantly. Why should they spend another $500 for another electronic gizmo if they aren’t required to?

So what do you think? Another Amazon hit–or a miss?

5 Commments

  1. Hmmm. If I could have gotten all my MA Ed textbooks in ebook Kindle format, I probably would have bought a $500 Kindle for that purpose. But only if ALL (or, all but a few) of the texts were available. Otherwise, the price is too steep for my tastes. Academia is the one area that I discovered and embraced the wonders of ebooks, even without the added features you mention. It was just so easy to highlight, annotate, footnote, search, etc–all the stuff one needs to do for a research paper. If we’re on our way to having all textbooks in electronic format, then Amazon is probably on its way to a hit.

  2. I think it’s a hit, as it overcomes one of my two biggest concerns–keeping the formatting of textbooks (and other books, like study Bibles). But (speaking as a student) until I can easily underline, circle, etc like a print book, they won’t be getting my business. I never feel like I can read thoughtfully unless I have a pen in my hand.

  3. I think it’s a hit, as it overcomes one of my two biggest concerns–keeping the formatting of textbooks (and other books, like study Bibles). But (speaking as a student) until I can easily underline, circle, etc like a print book, they won’t be getting my business. I never feel like I can read thoughtfully unless I have a pen in my hand.

  4. The Kindle DX is not something I intend to purchase but I am not a student either.

    I do like my Kindle 2 a lot and find it very well suited to my personal reading habits. I read the local newspaper every morning, a lot of fiction, and some non-fiction.

    The newspaper is a subscription and very well done. It is still unclear to me that it is a viable business model for newspapers but I really like having mine. I tried a couple of magazines and did not like them at all and also did not like a couple of other newspapers.

    It is very nice that I can manage my notes and marks via the web. That’s a feature that I had not really anticipated but makes perfect sense.

    The iPhone Kindle application is really impressive to me. It is much better than I expected and used much more than I ever dreamed.

    The big thing to me about using a digital textbook is that everyone would have to be using exactly the same content. I know of at least one case in a study group where some people were using regular books and others were using e-books and there were too many differences.

    Otherwise though it seems to make a lot of sense to me digital textbooks to become common.

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