2 Weeks from Kindle Textbookstore

[pking36330]

From KindleBoards:
I am a college professor and am currently writing a report for our administration on the feasibility of using a Kindle for college textbooks. I wrote to the publishers mentioned in Amazon's May 6 press release (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....cle&ID=1285140) and received a response from one of them indicating that Amazon will be opening a Kindle DX textbook "store" on or about July 1. I, for one, will eagerly be watching to see how many texts are actually offered and at what prices.

[TallMomof2]

I'm betting the textbooks are in Topaz format. Why? PDF support is lackluster and Topaz has not been cracked ....yet.

[poohbear_nc]

FWIW - my inadvertantly purchased Topaz books display quite well on the DX - I was pleasantly surprised. One even had illustrations that zoom very well. So, depending on how the text/fonts were encoded - they might read OK.

[Elphaba]

I would have killed for Kindle DX textbooks when I was in college. I can trace the start of my shoulder problems back to those frigging loaded book bags.

Just one more thing for us to be able to tell the youngsters "when I was your age..."

[KathyB]

I'm a librarian at a medical school and we've been discussing whether or not medical textbooks were available on the Kindle. We already hand the students a fully loaded laptop and PDA at registration. It would be cool to hand them a Kindle with all their textbooks loaded on it and ready to go.

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by Elphaba

I would have killed for Kindle DX textbooks when I was in college. I can trace the start of my shoulder problems back to those frigging loaded book bags.

Just one more thing for us to be able to tell the youngsters "when I was your age..."

I can relate. I remember a few semesters I was carrying around in excess of 40 lbs of books every day. I also have some shoulder issues these days. A Kindle DX would have been a godsend those year.

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by KathyB

I'm a librarian at a medical school and we've been discussing whether or not medical textbooks were available on the Kindle. We already hand the students a fully loaded laptop and PDA at registration. It would be cool to hand them a Kindle with all their textbooks loaded on it and ready to go.

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

I can relate. I remember a few semesters I was carrying around in excess of 40 lbs of books every day. I also have some shoulder issues these days. A Kindle DX would have been a godsend those year.

Try carrying Harrison's Textbook of Internal Medicaine and Whatever Surgery Textbook they recommend. Along with Gray's Anatomy and a pathology tome!

[TallMomof2]

Engineering textbooks aren't too light, either! I would've loved to have had those texts in electronic form but back in the stone age when I attended college the only computers on campus were the mainframes. The year I graduated one of the other state engineering colleges started requiring incoming freshmen to bring a PC.

I'll be interested to see what the DX textbook store looks like.

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

I'll be interested to see what the DX textbook store looks like.

I'll be curious to see what the prices look like. I remember paying a hundred dollars or more per book, used, for a few of my textbooks in college. I'd hope electronic distribution would reduce prices to a reasonable range. I can remember one particularly egregious example was a small and thin volume that ran me $180 if memory serves.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Teyrnon

I'll be curious to see what the prices look like. I remember paying a hundred dollars or more per book, used, for a few of my textbooks in college. I'd hope electronic distribution would reduce prices to a reasonable range. I can remember one particularly egregious example was a small and thin volume that ran me $180 if memory serves.

Unfortunately, that's highly unlikely to occur. Textbooks are expensive because they are extremely costly to produce (compared to fiction), and have a very restricted market. The printing and distribution costs are negligible compared to that. Electronic distribution might reduce the price of a $100 textbook to $90, but you're never going to see $10 textbooks in fields like medicine.

[Slow_hand]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unfortunately, that's highly unlikely to occur. Textbooks are expensive because they are extremely costly to produce (compared to fiction), and have a very restricted market. The printing and distribution costs are negligible compared to that. Electronic distribution might reduce the price of a $100 textbook to $90, but you're never going to see $10 textbooks in fields like medicine.

Then there will be (nearly) zero incentive to buy, since one can often sell or trade-in used textbooks for credit or OTOH buy used textbooks.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unfortunately, that's highly unlikely to occur. Textbooks are expensive because they are extremely costly to produce (compared to fiction)

I do not believe this is true. Most fiction authors seems to spend more time on a book then a text book author. Also text book authors very often write the book as part of their full time academic job.

Text books are expensive because the market is so small.

[HarryT]

I meant "expensive for the publisher". Textbooks generally have extremely complex typesetting requirements compared to a novel.

[KathyB]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Try carrying Harrison's Textbook of Internal Medicaine and Whatever Surgery Textbook they recommend. Along with Gray's Anatomy and a pathology tome!

Harrison's is actually online now as are most of the Lange DX and TX series. MD Consult has a long list of texts online that the students subscribe to for $100 a year. I think the next logical step is textbooks on an e-reader and I don't think the texts will be $10, but I don't think they will be astronomical either.

[pshrynk]

I think that Harrison's was briefly up for sale but later pulled because of massive formatting problems. It was around $120 if memory serves. I'm still holding out for Kaplan and Sadock's, meself...