Are students soon going to be carrying around all their textbooks on devices like the Kindle? In an article I wrote this week for the Occidental Weekly, I discuss the implications of textbooks as ebooks, and why I think e-textbooks aren’t yet ready for prime time.

Click here to read the whole story >>

Also check out what I’ve written about the pros and cons of electronic textbooks, and how publishers can make electronic textbooks successful.

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

It seems that the Kindle has moved far beyond merely being the bestselling “wireless reading device” on Amazon — it is now the bestselling device on Amazon.com, period. (Yes, it is even a better seller than the Playmobil Airport Security Checkpoint.) According to Amazon’s press release (and their front page), the Kindle is also the #1 most wished for and gifted item on their site. It seems that keeping the Kindle as the featured item on Amazon’s front page for the last several months has really helped increase mindshare and generate sales. The buzz over ebook readers that Amazon is trying to create should help their competitor’s ebook reader sales as well. Too bad their main rival — the Nook — is already sold out.

…over on Amazon.com, they’re touting that the Kindle is the bestselling “wireless reading device” on Amazon. What are the odds?
But, then again, Barnes and Noble says they’re already sold out of Nooks for the holidays.

I’ve written about how the Kindle and other ebook readers might replace traditional textbooks, and what the companies can do to make electronic textbooks successful. But, those articles assumed that the technology would be totally dependable. If people worry — even for a second — that their notes might just disappear if they start using the Kindle for schoolwork, then the Kindle will be shunned by students.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.

Here’s the story: A few weeks ago, Amazon made copies of certain books disappear off people’s Kindles. The books were purchased legally, but those selling the books didn’t have the rights to them, so the books were pulled and people’s accounts refunded for the purchase. Problem is, Amazon didn’t notify anyone, and people didn’t know that Amazon could even do that. There were a lot of unhappy surprises the next time people went to pick up their Kindles. Eventually, Amazon did apologize, promise never to do it again, and restore everyone’s books.

But, when one student got his copy of 1984 back on his Kindle (isn’t that book choice ironic?), he discovered that all his notes and annotations for his class were gone. That’s a big problem when you’re relying on those notes for essays and tests. Yes, the Kindle ate his homework.

Now the student is bringing a class-action lawsuit against Amazon. That might be a little excessive, but it emphasizes the importance of notes to students — losing them could mean losing an entire semester or year’s worth of work. Amazon needs to settle the suit quickly and quietly.

If anything like this ever happens again, it will be a gigantic setback for ebooks in education. Amazon better hope that people forget this episode. If this story crosses students’ minds when it’s time to decide on textbooks, they will find that suddenly all anybody wants is a good old paper book.

Related Posts:

• Article: Kindle Textbooks — Are Universities Going to Lead the Way to a ‘Paperless Society’?
• Article: How Publishers Can Make Electronic Textbooks Successful
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As it currently stands, electronic textbooks will never take off. Last month I wrote an article about this, discussing the pros and cons of using e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle DX for college textbooks. There are many advantages to e-textbooks – read the article for a list – but there is one big, overwhelming con that will prevent widespread adoption – price.

Electronic textbooks might be cheaper than their traditional counterparts, but as long as they are more expensive than a used physical textbook less its resell value, which is what most students actually pay for textbooks, they can never become mainstream.

However, all this assumes that electronic textbooks will be a replacement for bound textbooks – but what if they actually become a supplement to them? As I pointed out in the article:

“With the drawbacks of Kindle textbooks, at this point they seem to be better suited as companions for regular textbooks than as replacements. The Kindle can go in the backpack to be carried around for quick reading and reference, but the regular hard-bound textbook can be still be used for serious studying and note taking.”

I believe that if publishers want electronic textbooks to take off, they need to start viewing them as a supplement to the paper version. More then that, they need to include them with the electronic version. What I’m suggesting is that publishers give away the electronic version of a textbook when a student buys the hard copy – for free.

Maybe this seems radical, but let me explain.

Having both types of textbook adds value and utility to each type. Not only do you have a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario where you can have both the portability and search ability of one with the color and ease of note-taking of the other, but they also directly compliment one another. For example, a student could use an e-book reader’s ability to search text to help them find something in the physical copy.

This extra value provides an incentive for students to buy new textbooks. Textbook publishers have always had to battle the used textbook market. The publisher is a monopolist – if you require a specific textbook you must get it from him – and so a markup is applied to textbook prices. The used textbook market helps subvert this markup, and in so doing cuts into the publisher’s profits.

In the past, publishers have attempted to stay ahead of the used textbook market by making periodic changes to the book and releasing new editions. However, including electronic textbooks would give them a new and permanent differentiator – if a student wants the extra utility that the electronic textbooks provide, they have to buy new.

Once a textbook is in electronic format, it costs the publisher practically nothing to distribute. There is a huge discrepancy between the cost to the publisher and the value for the consumer. For the price of a few cents of bandwidth, a publisher can entice a several hundred dollar textbook purchase.

Now, there are a few potential snags. The main one involves publishing rights – authors and institutions will likely demand an additional premium for their work to be published electronically.

This is a bullet that publishers are just going to have to bite. They should be able to work out a pretty good deal for themselves though, just like they do for traditional textbook publishing. After all, most Professors must publish with a certain frequency in order to keep their jobs, and usually the only way to get published is to go through these textbook companies. This gives the publishers all the power in the negotiation.

The second snag has to do with the maturity of e-books themselves. While the Kindle is the most successful e-book reader, it is far from ubiquitous and there are many competing formats.

Textbook publishers are going to have to decide which e-book platforms they want to publish on to reach the most students. If an electronic textbook is in a format that a student can’t access, then it is of no value to them. Eventually the market should start to converge around a few preferred formats, but until then the best strategy is to offer a version of an electronic textbook in as many formats as possible.

Electronic textbooks have the promise to be a huge boon to the profits of the textbook industry. They just need to pick up the pace and embrace this new publishing technology. And, they need to realize that the best price for these textbooks in this new medium is free.

More Posts About E-Books:

• Article: Kindle Textbooks – Are Universities Going to Lead the Way to a ‘Paperless Society’?

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Sometimes, an idea will seem great on first glance, but the more you think about it the less sense it seems to make. I call it the “wait a minute…” factor, and it can’t be avoided when talking about bringing college textbooks to the Kindle.

Recently, Amazon announced a new, larger version of their Kindle device, the Kindle DX. More importantly, along with the product introduction, they announced a pilot program with certain schools to use the Kindle to replace traditional hard-bound textbooks.

This actually isn’t the first time college textbooks have been made available on the Kindle. In fact, in July 2008 I did a story for KGO Radio AM-810 in San Francisco about how Berkeley (the University of California press more specifically) was offering a very small number of textbooks in the Kindle format. That story can be found here.

However, in that case, students needed to buy their own Kindles, and very few books were available. With this program, Amazon will be supplying the Kindles, and the institutions can distribute them to the students who can best make use of them.

The schools on board with Amazon are Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Pace, Reed, and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and with this initial program, Amazon will only provide 50 Kindles per school, or 300 Kindles in total.

This is a very small number, but it hasn’t stopped people from getting excited at the possibilities that come with electronic textbooks. It’s easy to see why.

Probably the most appealing thing about putting textbooks on the Kindle is the device’s size and portability. Regular textbooks are almost always large and heavy, and for this reason they are rarely carried from place to place. The Kindle is small and light enough to throw in a bag and carry around everywhere, so students can have access to all their textbooks anytime. That is a big convenience, and will definitely prove useful to a lot of students.

Having books in an electronic format also allows for things that just can’t happen with paper textbooks, such as searching the full book text (which will make it much easier to find things than poking around the index) and immediate word/item lookup using the built-in dictionary or wikipedia. These are fantastic capabilities, and give students ways to study that they haven’t had in the past.

Unfortunately, it’s right about here that the pros start turning into cons and the “wait a minute…” factor kicks in. For all of the advantages to electronic textbooks, there are as many disadvantages.

Color is one of the most obvious ones. As of now, e-ink screens (the type used on most ebook readers, including the Kindle and the Kindle DX) are only available in black and white. This can be a huge downside when it comes to many types of textbooks, especially science textbooks with many diagrams or art textbooks which include numerous examples of artwork. Color e-ink screens should become available eventually, but it might be a long time before they do, and it is uncertain how much cost they will add to the devices that feature them.

There are disadvantages when it comes to notetaking as well. With the Kindle, it is not possible to highlight your notes in 30 different colors, or to underline passages, or to quickly write notes in the margins, or to do any of the hundred different little things students like to do with their textbooks to help them absorb the information. The Kindle does allow for students to highlight sections (in one color only), to add notes with the little keyboard, and to digitally earmark pages, but these don’t come close to the speed, ease, and functionality that comes with marking up your book by hand.

Additionally, having all the books on one device like the Kindle makes it impossible to have two (or, if you’re unlucky, more) textbooks open side by side, which is unfortunately sometimes necessary. It also means that a student would be unable to loan a textbook to another student without loaning out all their textbooks.

However, what is going to be the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Kindle textbooks is price. College students usually have little money and so are very price sensitive. While the $489 dollar price point for the Kindle DX is a drop the bucket relative to most students’ tuition payments, it is still a lot of money out of pocket. But, the real price factor with the Kindle will be the costs of the textbooks themselves.

Theoretically, Kindle textbooks should be cheaper than regular textbooks – after all, they are eliminating the publishing costs of the textbook, so some of that will be passed on to the consumer. However, the high prices of textbooks are only in part to do with the cost of actually producing the textbook. Most of the cost of textbooks comes from the markups that come from the market that the publishing companies have to themselves.

In order to be published, college professors need to go through one of a limited number of companies that publish academic journals or textbooks. Being published is a necessity of the profession and usually a requirement of employment at most colleges and universities, so professors are willing to sign contracts with these companies that grant them exclusivity rights to the publishing and award the professors relatively little in royalties. At this point, these companies have a monopoly, as they have customers who must have a specific textbook for their classes, and therefore must buy it from the one company that publishes it. Thus, monopoly pricing ensues and a markup is applied to textbook prices as these firms look to maximize profits.

While electronic textbooks will eliminate the publication costs, they will not affect the monopoly that these companies have or the pricing that goes with it. What this means is that textbooks for the Kindle would likely be slightly less expensive than their physical counterparts, but not enormously so. Whether this discount will even justify the upfront cost of the Kindle device remains to be seen.

In real life though, Kindle textbooks will never be cheaper for students, because they would have to be less expensive than second hand textbooks, less the price of reselling them at the end of the year. Because textbooks are so expensive, most students buy them used from other students, and then resell them to the students who will need them when the course is over. As long as new editions of the textbook don’t come out, this method helps students acquire textbooks for dramatically less than buying them new.

With electronic textbooks, there is no such thing as buying a “used” copy, and they are impossible to resell. It is doubtful that textbook publishers will want or be able to undercut the second hand textbook market with their e-book textbooks, but if they don’t it is hard to see Kindle textbooks becoming widespread.

With the drawbacks of Kindle textbooks, at this point they seem to be better suited as companions for regular textbooks than as replacements. The Kindle can go in the backpack to be carried around for quick reading and reference, but the regular hard-bound textbook can be still be used for serious studying and note taking. However, no one would want to pay twice for a textbook, so this scenario is not conceivable anytime soon.

At this point, it’s impossible to see Kindle textbooks catching on with most students. The convenience that they provide is great, but there are too many drawbacks, and the cost is too high. We’ll have to see if future versions of the Kindle, or competitors from other companies, can make e-textbooks more compelling, and get them to make sense financially.