Students and eReaders: Kindles and Nooks

[SensualPoet]

There's an interesting new twist in the student market this morning: Amazon has cut some juicy deals to put textbooks on Kindles as "30 day rentals".

From Amazon's press release: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....008&highlight=

You can see more about the program directly on the Kindle page here.

Putting textbooks on e-readers, so far, has been problematic given the limitations of e-readers: not so great at pdfs, challenges with special characters (like chemical formulas), inability to easily create and share notes, challenges in printing, difficulty in lifting highlights to place into an essay, etc etc.

Barnes and Noble, with abt 650 college stores, has a captive audience and an internal conflict of interest: sell the student a new $100 text book on campus, or provide some sort of ebook variation nationally which doesn't provide the bricks and mortar campus store with any sustaining revenue.

B&N also has a laudible NookStudy program which helps leverage the brand in the educational market.

Amazon's Kindle textbook rental program doesn't solve any of these issues; it just reduces the electronic price of a textbook and disposes with the need to recycle texts to the next cohort needing it. There is a convenience factor, of course ... presumably B&N could duplicate this effort if it chooses.

This is yet another example of Amazon seeding the market with lots of cool, gee whiz announcements ahead of its July 26th earnings announcement.

[OtterBooks]

etextbooks are a ways off from acceptance, at least at the university level. Even tech savvy students and instructors become very practical when it comes to education, and err on the side of the sturdy practicality of paper books. At least for the time being.

[MV64]

Not all textbooks really work as an ebook. In my field (history and political science) it could be done very easily, but I can see problems arising on the user end for more complicated things like the sciences. It's simply much easier to flip through pages to find the section you're looking for in a science book than in searching for it on a computer or e-reader.

[RainingLemur]

I'd at least like the option to have etexts for certain classes. But, I do agree with the above poster in the thought of science books being on ereaders...that could be more trouble than it's worth.

[Phogg]

Anything with heavy math or chart use would need multiple pages open.

When tablets become cheap enough that a student can have four or so on their desk then it might work.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

etextbooks are a ways off from acceptance, at least at the university level. Even tech savvy students and instructors become very practical when it comes to education, and err on the side of the sturdy practicality of paper books. At least for the time being.

I think you are over-generalizing. I have spent some time in school (I have a BS, an MBA, an MS and - in a month - a PhD, plus I teach at a major state university). Both schools I have worked at and both departments (Statistics and Finance) are transiting to digital versions. Instructors ahead of students - me and most of my teaching colleagues use PDF versions of textbooks to prepare, mostly on iPads - just because of the ease of carrying books around and sharing notes and annotations. Many students use digital textbooks, but mostly pirated - because they are free, not because they are more convenient.

I agree, it is only slowly catching up - but it is catching up. And, with an appropriate device, digital books are much more convenient. Unfortunately, no e-ink device is yet 'appropriate', in my view.

[carpetmojo]

Obviously, the following is very dependent on the individual, but do you really think a reader is robust enough to replace the almost indestructible book for students generally ?

I'd suggest the earlier the stage of education the more unlikely this is, until they get to the further education/university level - when I reckon the chances of damage rise sharply again !

My son studies a reading-heavy humanity subject, but he also fences all over the country, and does a lot of gym, so books have to share bags with damp,sweaty clothes, sharp, hard, pointy, inflexible objects - all generally shoved in at great rates of speed - and naturally left in co-existence for sometimes lengthy periods !
(Even when in a bag without the sporty bits, said bag is often hurled around generally, sat on, things dumped on, like amplifiers, also their own heavy bags by house mates.....)

Then there's the beer situation......

And possibly the results...... ?

Come on, they manage to kill hardbacks for goodness sake....

No, the day they bring out a waterproof, shockproof reader like those underwater cameras, that's when feel learned tomes can be put in digital form !

Course, I don't bring this up with any element of remembering what I was like in my youth, no no, far from it - I just buckled down and studied the nights away.................................

[SensualPoet]

In spite of all the good arguments for why it doesn't work, Amazon Kindle has launched this program and Amazon usually has a good nose for making the unpalatable profitable.

They are likely to focus on the textbooks that can easily be replaced in order to wrest some share (mind share and dollar share) from Barnes and Noble. If a student can replace several textbooks with ebook editions, at a significant savings per book, and those are the textbooks that don't have special requirements ... even if s/he continues to buy hard cover editions of the remaining books ... Amazon could have a winning product on its hands. I'd much rather lug around a Kindle and three text books than seven text books ... especially if I can save real dollars in term and not have to go through hoops to dispose of them at end of term.

[VicLavigne]

I think given a sturdy enough case an ebook reader would be fine in any gymbag. Such case obviously needs to be rigid, not just a neoprene sleeve. Any textbooks might work better in regular readers if they'd just go to an epub version instead of pdf..... not sure why this is so hard for the publishers to do, even illustration-heavy texts can embed pictures without a problem.

Victor

[wyndslash]

as long as it's a textbook, i'd still rather go for the pbook version as i can flip through it easily