MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - What to do when you have the money to buy 10 e-readers?

Keloff · 10-27-2011, 04:48 PM

Hi folks,

I'm a fairly old MR lurker (tend to spend more time being twot at), but I've been advocating e-reading for a pretty long time. I teach publishing students here in sunny SA about publishing in the digital environment, with a strong focus on the book sector & especially e-production.

I may receive a grant to purchase 8-10 e-readers to use in a postgraduate course we're developing. My first idea was to order these Kindles, but now I'm reconsidering. Any veterans out there have some advice?

Background:
* Here's an overview of the course.
* We're in South Africa, and Amazons ships here. B&N and Kobo don't and Sony's devices are just too expensive. Shipping & import fees deposit are also pretty expensive and I don't see any bulk order discounts.
* Electronics stores sporadically stock ereaders, but they're heavily marked up and often without a distribution platform.
* I want to have my students experience all the advantages of e-reading. This includes social reading, sharing notes & annotations, wireless access, as well as the stuff readers & content creators struggle with e.g. format conversion, dealing with DRM, etc.

So yeah...my initial idea to target Amazon was because of the accessibility of its devices. I also want students to not -have- to read on their ereader only so that they can understand what the implications of platform-agnostic reading is, so Amazon's range of reader applications is also a plus.

I'm not crazy about Amazon's insistence to stick with their own format, but now that Kindle's moving closer to HTML5, I'm not that concerned. Either way, students will learn the value of HTML, CSS, XML etc. coupled with good design & great metadata. We will focus on EPUB if we can't focus on both, though.

10-27-2011, 04:48 PM	#1
Keloff Electronic media explorer Posts: 64 Karma: 169796 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Pretoria, South Africa Device: Kindle (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation), iPad 2	What to do when you have the money to buy 10 e-readers? Hi folks, I'm a fairly old MR lurker (tend to spend more time being twot at), but I've been advocating e-reading for a pretty long time. I teach publishing students here in sunny SA about publishing in the digital environment, with a strong focus on the book sector & especially e-production. I may receive a grant to purchase 8-10 e-readers to use in a postgraduate course we're developing. My first idea was to order these Kindles, but now I'm reconsidering. Any veterans out there have some advice? Background: * Here's an overview of the course. * We're in South Africa, and Amazons ships here. B&N and Kobo don't and Sony's devices are just too expensive. Shipping & import fees deposit are also pretty expensive and I don't see any bulk order discounts. * Electronics stores sporadically stock ereaders, but they're heavily marked up and often without a distribution platform. * I want to have my students experience all the advantages of e-reading. This includes social reading, sharing notes & annotations, wireless access, as well as the stuff readers & content creators struggle with e.g. format conversion, dealing with DRM, etc. So yeah...my initial idea to target Amazon was because of the accessibility of its devices. I also want students to not -have- to read on their ereader only so that they can understand what the implications of platform-agnostic reading is, so Amazon's range of reader applications is also a plus. I'm not crazy about Amazon's insistence to stick with their own format, but now that Kindle's moving closer to HTML5, I'm not that concerned. Either way, students will learn the value of HTML, CSS, XML etc. coupled with good design & great metadata. We will focus on EPUB if we can't focus on both, though. Last edited by Keloff; 11-11-2011 at 02:39 AM. Reason: Added an overview of the course.