Comments on: Kindles for students, 30K WSJ Kindle subscribers

By: Higher Education Opportunity Program » Blog Archive » 10 Predictions for the Future of the Textbook

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:47:12 +0000

[...] smart phones and ebook reading devices. Some schools are already handing out iPhones, iTouches, and Kindles to their students so they will have access not only to digital texts, but in the case of smart [...]

By: Gordon Hosten

Gordon Hosten — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:42:31 +0000

I know loads of students a bit annoyed that it’s still hard to find many sites or publishers that offer (proper) textbooks to use on an eReader…come on, its 2009, why are we still using those heavy things that go out of date by the time they go to and cost over a hundred bucks?

While I was Googling for “download textbooks” the other week I found the site http://www.bookboon.com I went on the site and found that they publish a huge range of textbooks – and every single textbook is made available to download free of charge!

I downloaded a few in the pdf e-book format that they come in and they work perfectly on my Kindle DX.

By: switch11

switch11 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:20:32 +0000

that’s a really, really interesting argument. You’re right – eReader companies should start pushing it as a bookcase surrogate that also does a lot of cool things.

By: gravel

gravel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:40:38 +0000

Skimmed the Network World piece. Have a comment on ‘e-reader price’ as a potential barrier.

The problem with price-perception, is that most people still seem to construe the device as a book surrogate, when in fact it’s a book*case* surrogate. Go to the largest *full* bookcase in your house. Remember how much it cost, including shipping, moving it in, etc. Now count the books on it.

My IKEA p.o.s. was over $200, and is maxed out at 275 titles. Add to that the piles of newspapers most people also have, and the articles some people keep in file drawers… and an e-reader with a decent amount of storage turns out to be pretty economical.

Add to *that* the availability of titles that are free to own in electronic format, and it only gets better.