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.