Amazon: New Kindle To Tap $5.5 Billion Textbook Market?

by: Michael Arrington posted on: July 18, 2008 | about stocks: AMZN    
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Earlier this week Crunchgear broke the news on two new upcoming Kindle models: a smaller form factor Kindle to be released this year ahead of the holidays, and a large screen (probably 8.5×11) to come sometime next year.

A couple of commenters in that post have pointed out that the large screen Kindle is perfect to target the college/university textbook market, a $5.5 billion market annually in the U.S. alone.

Most students still buy print versions of textbooks, and carrying them around is as big a pain as it has been for past generations of students. Most publishers now offer electronic versions of their textbooks - McGraw-Hill Education, for example, publishes 95% of their books electronically as well as in print. But there is no compelling device to read them on. The current Kindle is too small, and laptops run out of power too quickly.

A new large-screen Kindle would solve those problems. The battery life is much longer than most electronic devices, and carrying a large Kindle is still a lot better than carrying 10 heavy textbooks. Our guess is that Amazon will make a major push into the educational markets next year - it’s the only obvious reason to create a large-screen Kindle.

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Michael Arrington

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This article has 7 comments:

  •  
    andrew j
    Jul 18 10:45 AM
    Wow, "the only reason to publish a large-screen version" ?

    PDF's are a fixed-layout format: the content is not easily separated from the presentation, (as opposed to html, for example). Having an 8.5"x11" version lets them support PDF's with much more fidelity. That's the big win. Electronic textbooks, probably distributed in PDFs, are definitely more possible, but bottom line is that this would make the device practically orders of magnitude more useful than it is.

    (and i'm a very happy kindle owner already! :)
  •  
    Eric Frantz
    Jul 18 11:46 AM
    My Website
    A college student myself, I can attest that books are a pain. But the Kindle will need to be a very streamlined product with an abundance of features to make it truly desirable for many students. Highlighting and taking notes in a hard copy book is easy. I imagine it is somewhat harder on the Kindle. Does anyone know if there a big difference in the cost of buying the book for the Kindle as opposed to the book in hard copy? It needs to be big enough that students can actually save money over their four years. Furthermore, there is a big market for used books. I am not all that familiar with the Kindle so correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that it is not likely that a student could buy a "used" online book for cheaper that the "new" online book. Lastly, I rarely have to carry more than two books at once and often only have to have my laptop for class.

    This is a great idea and is quit possible in the future, but there really needs to be a huge advantage to buying the Kindle before students will be willing to go an spend hundreds more dollars just to save some weight.

    emervest.blogspot.com
  •  
    User 228386
    Jul 18 04:55 PM
    Isn't amazon just tapping into its own more profitable hardcover textbook sales?
  •  
    Stephjen
    Jul 18 09:55 PM
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    as a college student myself, having textbooks on kindles would be terrible. first, there's a convience and enhanced learning capability (at least in my opinion) to having a physical book to flip through and make marks in; plus, if you buy used and sell when done, textbooks aren't that expensive. i doubt kindle textbooks would be widely used at all.

    (many textbooks are now becoming available online, and no one uses them.)
  •  
    Jeremy Krinn
    Jul 19 08:50 AM
    I think the big advantage for a large screen is also the technical area. I work in IT and IT books are just as weighty if not more so then textbooks. They even update more frequently then text books as software/hardware changes faiirly rapidly and quite large books go out of date every few years and are useless (for example, books on Microsoft Operating Systems change every few years). For example, one book currently available on the Kindle for a Microsoft software package would be 1200 pages if bought as a real book...that is not even easy to use at a desk let alone a reference or carrying it with you to/from work or job sites. And it will probably only be good for a couple years when the next upgrade comes out (or will need to be updated when patching/updates are done).

    Manuals and white papers for equipment etc.. are usually in PDF format and look much better from a layout perspective. It would offer some diagramming to be better viewed too (IT has lots of visual representations).

    I think the large format will also allow better layout management (i.e. magazines, etc...). Currently graphs/tables are slightly challenging to read. As a recent graduate, I wish I had the Kindle or the large version for all my books, not only is it the weight it is the opportunity to have your entire text book library with you at all times. Not just your current class, but every text book for every class you ever took and all at 10 ounces. The Kindle does support some note taking/highlighting, but personally, I use MS OneNote for all my notes (that is another technology that I cannot say enough good things about), that way even my handwritten notes are searchable (i.e. no flipping pages to find a note).

    A larger format will open many more markets then just text books in my opinion. Even the scientific community members I have shown it to, really like it but they read many scientific journals and most articles are designed to fit 8/12 x 11. They balk at the current Kindle due to it size or will think of only non-professional reading for its use (i.e. novels, etc...). Especially challenging is that many journal articles will include graphs/tables etc... A large layout will allow them to be viewed in more detail.

    That is not to say that all this is available online but the beauty of the Kindle is that many people read quite a bit a reading on an LCD and welcome not reading a backlit display.

    (I also am already a Kindle owner and will own 2 when a large one comes out).
  •  
    Ames
    Tiedeman
    Jul 19 01:26 PM
    My Website
    AMZN is the best on-line retailer on the planet.
  •  
    joes
    Jul 20 10:58 PM
    My Website
    There are a number of very good reasons to move onto a platform like the Kindle for textbooks. First is the reduction of the cost of paper books and the elimination of the resource intense process of printing books. While there will be books for as long as we can think about, the cost of printing books often enough to keep them current is too high relative to the e-Book alternative.

    The screens will be amazing and finally will provide as good of an experience as printed books. The ability to update and correct an electronic book is a strong advantage for eBooks over printed copies.

    It will evaporate some businesses, but being from Pittsburgh it was clear long again that businesses are like species and they are all endangered. The networking capability will allow peer to peer to take on new tasks, tutoring, collaboration, and students will do things that we can't imagine.

    The good news is that the savings and higher level of performance from the eBooks will provide an educational advantage at a time that we really need one.
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