The Kindle: Potential cost-saver for college students—but not necessarily for everyone
"…if college students had the ability to buy all their textbooks on Kindles, they could wipe out the cost of a Kindle with their savings over printed books in 3 semesters, or a year and a half." – Jason Perlow’s ZDNet blog.
The TeleRead take: See the full Perlow item for context. Also remember, this calculation doesn’t cover a more typical reader. "At the two books per month level," Pelow writes, the $359 Kindle is "going to need to cost around $125.00 or $150.00 or so."
Other issues exist besides costs—for example, durability and whether the Kindle’s six-inch monochrome screen is suitable for illustration-heavy textbooks and others with many pictures.
Related: Past TeleBlog posts on the Kindle economics issue and Slashdot discussion.
Photo credit: CC-licensed image from Kari Sullivan of her dog Robot "modeling" the K machine. She’s separately shared her own impressions of the Kindle.
November 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I was a literature major, and probably half of my required readings could now be found on-line for free. I’d still need library copies for essay-writing since you need to cite pages for those. But it would be easy enough to use reserve copies to look those up, and I only wrote about half of the readings anyway in take-home type of essays. An ebook reader and Project Gutenberg would have saved me a fortune if it had been available then!
November 16th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Exactly, Ficbot! And with something like an 8G Touch–just great for PG-style books–e-books would be even more cost-effective than with a Kindle. Thanks. David
November 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Those with internet connected phones can, of course, read for “free” now (although that free does come at greater cost than having “just a cell phone). The rest can read for free on their computers (sure, a tiny percentage may not have their own, but all have access to them at that level, even if in the library – no more waiting for that required classic to come back in so you can check it out). But that reading won’t be as pleasant as on any eInk reader (Kindle or not). Once a larger screen model with support for complex pages (pdf or epub or otherwise) is available, the average student may see a return in much less than three semesters. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have one or two expensive books per course and at 5-6 courses at a time, this drives the above estimate down to a break even point in the first semester, even at current prices. Those taking all English Lit classes, of course, may find that they don’t save as much on texts (but are also likely to be the type that are buying them now just for relaxation reading).
Sure, some books don’t work well with eInk (even in color), but there is also no reason they can’t tie in to a website maintained by the publisher (where medical and engineering illustrations can offer much more detail and depth than any book) or to a professor’s notes page. And those would be better accessed by phone or laptops (where the bigger screens offer a large advantage in view, while phones are more portable; so, use both).