The Chronicle of Higher Education, a highly-respected education website, has
posted an article on the new, larger Kindle's possible future role in education, amid discussions of e-textbooks around the corner.
They compare it primarily to the
other electronic device most students can use to read e-texts--a laptop--and the fact that previous efforts to offer e-texts have not caught on in the past, possibly leaving a bad taste in the mouths of students and faculty. It also suggests that e-text services may have been badly marketed, or not at all, leaving students and faculty clueless as to its very existence. And it suggests a rebranding may be what is required, to get people past the "bad old days" of older e-book efforts (not a bad idea, at that).
Perhaps most interesting (from their point of view) was this:
Quote:
|
Publishers are eager to go digital in hopes of eliminating the used-book market, as buyers are prohibited from reselling electronic books, argues Albert N. Greco. a professor of marketing at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business who studies the textbook industry. That market represents "a staggering amount of business that the publishers lose," he said, "so by going to digital they'll be able to regain what they lose in used books."
|