Old Content:

The Kindle, Not All Bad

December 14, 2007 by Kyle Brady
Tags: Books, E-Readers, Education, Future, School, Technology
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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If you're reading this, then chances are you know about Amazon.com's Kindle, an e-book reader... kind of like an iPod for books. And you also probably know that it's getting major criticism for everything from it's battery life to it's product design to if it's even useful.

But one major market is being overlooked here, without anyone thinking about the potential effect it may have: students.

Textbooks are super expensive, and it gets even worse when you go to college. $350 for a textbook? And it's not made of silver? The biggest excuse for the price of textbooks (even if you buy them used online, they're still very expensive) is the printing. Hardback + many many pages + color + nice and glossy pages = high printing cost.

I guess that makes sense. So why don't you not print at such a high standard, and lower the prices a little bit, eh? BECAUSE YOU WANT MY MONEY!

Most high schoolers (at least the ones that actually want to go to college) carry a backpack full of textbooks to and from school everyday. Not one of those laptop backpacks, but a super-size LL Bean backpack that is made of that funny material that'll stretch, but not easily rip.

Doctors and parents complain this is ruining their children's backs. College kids refuse to bring books to class because it's so difficult to make that 30min walk across campus with 15 books in their bag, totaling the entire weight of a large hobbit.

Why don't we use less textbooks then? Oh, maybe because there's usually 2 books required, if not more, for the average college class, and rumor has it those "Barnes and Noble Campus Bookstore" places highly encourage the use of multiple books, especially when they're new...

Remember when laptops were going to revolutionize the learning process, about 10 years ago? How parents were fighting for their kids to be able to use laptops in the high school classroom? And colleges were promising to make the texts available via computer?

What happened to that? I know I haven't ever used a digital textbook in college, and I don't know of anyone else that does either. But the ones I do hear about are usually clunky: you have to install special software, only install once... sounds like something Microsoft would create, right?

So here's my solution. Since publishers are apparently incapable of publishing full-color textbooks in PDF format, and selling them iTunes-style (not through iTunes, but the same idea of online distribution)... which would considerably cut costs, since not only is the book not physically printed, but it's not shipped anywhere either... why don't we take advantage of the "I want to be popular" technology of the moment?

E-book readers like the Kindle (there are others, but this is the one to get the most coverage so far) could be the easy solution. Try this out on college campuses, where the kids have money to spend, and actually might want to learn:

1. Include as part of tuition a one-time fee for an e-book reader. Deliver this at orientation Freshman year.


2. All classes have the option to buy a printed version of a book, but are suggested to use the digital version, available for download at the appropriate location.


3. See how happy it makes everyone.


4. Continue this program every year.


5. Eventually stop even printing these college textbooks.

"Oh but what if it breaks?!?!?!" Easy answer. I'm pretty sure that if you have to pay anywhere between $100-300 every now and then, even if it's every year, to get your textbooks for a fraction of the cost ($30 Physics books anyone?), no-one is going to complain. So don't give me that IT crap as an excuse.

Maybe e-readers are not going to be very popular in general population for another decade or two. I mean, seriously, a digital library of books isn't going to impress anyone... no-one's iPod or iTunes library is of any interest either, right?

But at least target the market that would benefit the most: poor college students who hate paying for textbooks every semester. College textbooks have been a problem since probably the dawn of time, and now here's a way to alleviate the pain.

Old Content posts are leftovers from a less structured, less civilzed era that are kept for posterity.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.