In the fall of 2008 Princeton will join the ranks of Yale, Oxford, and UC Berkeley by offering some textbooks on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. The Kindle sells for $359 by Amazon, and uses Sprint’s high-speed EVDO data network to let customers download new books on-the-go. The device has actually been more popular than I anticipated, and it’s now catching the attention of universities.
Being a recent college grad myself I can say that having to carry around a Kindle over a bunch of textbooks is very appealing. Not only would it be easier on your back, but you would never have to worry about leaving a book you needed at home. The real question is whether textbook publishers will find the Kindle equally appealing.
I know you’re probably thinking that publishing on the Kindle is a win-win for everyone. Publishers wouldn’t have to worry about printing any books, and they also wouldn’t have used textbooks getting resold (which they don’t get any money from). For that reason they should be able to drastically lower the prices, right?
There’s a tiny little “gotcha” in the Amazon Kindle terms & conditions that would likely drive most textbook authors away from publishing their materials. What is it? Well, publishers only receive 30% of the revenue from the sale of their books:
For each calendar month during the Term, provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you royalties (”Publisher Royalties”) equal to thirty percent (30%) of Subscription sales revenues actually received by us from sales of Subscriptions to your Publications during the month, net of any bad debt, credits and returns.
For smaller publishing companies this might not be a big deal since the Kindle would make their content more widely available, but I can’t see some of the larger companies going for this. They are often accustomed to getting 100% of the revenue by selling directly to the universities, and so the Kindle would be taking away 70% of that revenue. Not only that but people would also expect the digital books to be cheaper since there are no printing costs.
It would be nice if Amazon was able to offer some sort of deal for textbook publishers so that more of them would be willing to put their books on the Kindle, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. After all, Amazon probably gets a hefty bill from Sprint every month since the device uses their wireless network at no cost to the customers.
Thanks to Omar for the tip!
Something else to consider…digital books can’t be sold back. So every student would have to pay full price for the book. I think book publisher would be all over that! I bet they charge more for the digital version.
I did mention that in the article, but there are still a lot of costs they need to recoup. I think you’re right that they would charge more for the digital version, but hopefully if they start to take off the costs will drop.
30% of revenue to the publishers? I doubt many publishers will be jumping on the Kindle wagon.
When I first read the title, I was thinking free. Nope, there’s no way this’ll catch on. I’d never pay a premium to try to pan textbook pages on a small screen. However, I’ve personally never seen the appeal in these E-reader devices.
To replace textbooks? I guess not, I like the concept behind e-readers, but the devices are still not as good as a real book, and there are many restrictions on books purchasing. In a way it’s similar to the problems e-music stores had to endure through.
Once you can buy e-books in a universal format, usable on all readers, without using proprietary systems (that means, right from the publisher or the writer’s web), and the readers improve their bad points (while keeping the advantages over real books), they’ll take the world by storm
Agreed. It needs to be like DRM-free MP3’s where you can put them on any device you want without the hassle of restrictions.
I’m with you there when you talk about the small screen! There’s no way my eyes would last if I had to read hundreds of pages on such a small screen.
College students usually have to scrounge around to come up with money for their books to begin with, so I can’t see them being willing to fork out the money for a Kindle so that they can read the books.
I just recently saw my first Kindle. While I like the idea of textbooks on a device not just for University Level but also HS and maybe even lower grades, there are major problems.
I’m mildly dyslexic and love reading on a computer because I can change fonts, colors, backgrounds to make text more readable. The Kindle was physically painful to read. The text started floating round. It also did what I call the cube thing (text looks 3D).
I think the Kindle has great potential – especially in secondary schools. Books are not purchased each year or sold back at that level. There are major complaints about students being injured because of over loaded backpacks. Also with the kindle students would be able to make notations in the Text. There is also the potential to have auditory books paired with the text. Textbooks publishers already have to provide a auditory version of the books here in Texas. Not to mention the ability to update books with new or corrected information.
I think there will have to be some improvements in the screen before secondary schools on down make the switch.
I can’t say that I’m overly fond of the screen either, and one thing that I’ve been wondering is whether the Kindle will need to be in color before it will really be an option to schools. Color screens aren’t always necessary, but they can aid in learning.
It would be stupid to sell the books at full price because students would love out on the resell/used prices. If they were sold at a reasonable discount (~20-30%) it would make sense. Used book sales are out of control anyway: students get raped on how insanely little they save on buying text books years old.
I bought a Kindle and love it largely because it is so convenient and the books are priced very fairly. But I also understand that some people do not purchase and read insane amounts of books annually; this means space is not much of an issue (one bedroom apartment).
The size of the screen may be an issue, but multiple font sizes are possible. And notes can be taken.
One thing I just thought of is how much professors would love sticking to students for not knowing the definition of a word: a built in feature of the Kindle that only takes a couple button clicks. It is already easy to open a dictionary and do it physically, but when I was in college hardly anyone–ever–actually did, and this was even after we were all killed with quiz after quiz for not knowing what words meant!