Comment by stse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stse | Hacker News Reader

Regarding evolution of the e-reader, I think course literature is going to be the "killer market". I've attended courses where half of the class couldn't even get all the books. Required reading is also often a fraction of the books content. Sometimes one book is more expensive then all the other books combined and you can't really make notes in them if you want to sell them later. If you miss a class session you always have to find out if there were any changes or notes handed out. To summarize, it's really a pain.

Imagine if you instead could loan/lease the books to your e-reader for the duration of the course and only pay for the relevant pages. You could make digital notes and share with your classmates and ask questions to your teachers. By syncing the device you would always have the latest course schedule and material. Some of this is doable without an e-reader, but there always be a disconnect between the analog and digital information.

This might already exist or never be practically feasible. But when people claim that 'people always prefer physical books', I don't agree. At least not when it comes to course literature.

On a side note, anyone seeing Google selling OCR'ed books as e-books with an android based e-reader? :)

Imagine if you instead could loan/lease the books to your e-reader for the duration of the course and only pay for the relevant pages.

I imagine that as soon as physical textbooks were out of availability the cost of "only the relevant pages" would climb drastically. Without an active market in used textbooks, and with DRM preventing any reselling of the content you purchased, I have little doubt that the captive student market would be exploited as hard and as often as possible.

The only real future for the publish industry that I see, with regard to course literature, is if they either create an outstanding service themselves or work together with the universities. I don't really see any drawback with electronic books that won't solve itself by time.

The publishing industry faces some of the same challenges that the music industry did when the mp3 players started to become available. And similar to then people will start to think of books as data, and not psychical things. They need to realize this and make the most of it themselves, and not make litigation and DRM part of their business plan.

Look at what working with the universities did for student loans. American educational institutions have proven themselves perfectly willing to screw their students for a cut of the profits.

Sure, that would be great for the publishing industry, just as it is for the student loan industry, but considering the cost to the student it doesn't seem like the outcome to root for.

I think course literature is going to be the "killer market".

IMO, the biggest factor keeping this from happening is the cost. Even if your textbook is on the Kindle Store, you have to pay an extra $260 and pay for the books on top of that.

I think most students would rather keep using their backpack until the price comes down.

I was ready to buy a Kindle when it first came out if my textbooks were on it, so that I wouldn't have to carry tens of pounds of books around campus. Unfortunately, only 1 of my textbooks were available at the time, and I still haven't bought a Kindle

You shouldn't even have to buy the device (Kindle). It should be included when you buy the first years course literature. I do think amazon knows what they are doing, but the publishers needs to wake up.

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