The next killer feature, if they can work out deals, will be college textbooks.

I just wonder how useful a textbook with a lot of graphs and illustrations is going to be in black and white. (Ditto for business & tech journals.)

Not to mention how much students mark up/highlight their textbooks, make notes in the margins -- yes, I'm sure the Kindle can have a function that allows for that, but will it work as well as a visual study aid?

And also, I remember needing to flip back and forth within one textbook, or multiple textbooks, which seems like a pain in the ass on a Kindle -- I really loathe editing in Word (versus on hard copy) for that very reason.

It doesn't seem practical for students. Not to mention prohibitively expensive.

The other thing to consider w/ textbooks is that students offset the cost by reselling them at the end of the term. You can't do that with a Kindle.

I just wonder how useful a textbook with a lot of graphs and illustrations is going to be in black and white.

When I think back to my CS, psychology, math, and even engineering textbooks, at least the high-level ones, I don't remember color illustrations. My Physics 1 text had them, as did my big biology reference text, but most of the ones for 100+ level classes (grad school allowed, which most students were taking by their junior year) were black and white. My teachers also published course notes in PDF format (usually from powerpoint slides), which may have been in color but I always printed them out on black-and-white laser printers with no problems.

Maybe I was the exception rather than the rule, though. But I've gotten a lot of "Could I get my textbooks and journal articles on there?" from people in education grad school, too, which is again very text-heavy.

As for note-taking, the features on the kindle aren't bad. I never use them, but my GF uses them all the time. If you make a highlight and note, it appears as a footnote that you can either see on the same page (in a box at the bottom) or navigate to and read separately. All of your highlights and notes also appear in a separate "book" called "My Clippings" that can be saved to your computer and printed / edited / whatever.

For flipping back and forth, it's not as easy as a real book but it's remarkably easy to set dozens or hundreds of bookmarks to various passages, which can be highlighted to remind you which is which, and the search function adds a powerful tool to the index, especially in books that have mediocre or hard to navigate indexes.

I don't think it would work for every student, by any means. But it would've worked great for me - with anything approaching a decent discount over the normal price I would've saved a lot of money over four years, and I wouldn't have had to get rid of my textbooks (which I often miss) when I moved, because they wouldn't have weighed 10 pounds each and required a giant bookcase.

ETA: Yeah, the reselling thing is a big problem. I'd like them to enable that, too. There were several books I had no interest in keeping, for sure, and a few of them got sold, which was nice.

The other thing to consider w/ textbooks is that students offset the cost by reselling them at the end of the term. You can't do that with a Kindle.

Yeah. I think the idea for textbooks is it'll be a good idea if the cost of the textbook can be substantially reduced for the Kindle.

My college days were so long ago - what is the average difference in price between what a student pays for a used book and what a student can get for selling the book back?

I think the idea for textbooks is it'll be a good idea if the cost of the textbook can be substantially reduced for the Kindle.

Since this has not yet happened with regular books or newspapers on the regular Kindle, I'm skeptical that textbook publishers would suddenly jump on board.

what is the average difference in price between what a student pays for a used book and what a student can get for selling the book back?

If you resell it to the bookstore, you'll get practically nothing, but most colleges have student-run Craigslist type boards for reselling directly to other students.

Well, if you sell the book back to the bookstore you usually get a little less than half the new price. They charge about 2/3 of the new price for a used one. So if you buy used and sell back, you can make back a decent portion of your money.

Imagine a $100 text. You can buy it used for about $70. You can sell it back for about $45. You ended up spending $25 for the book. I doubt that book would ever sell for $25 on the Kindle, so by that measure, Kindle's a bad deal.

BUT, you have to move fast and get lucky to get all of your books used - I never managed to get used copies for more than half of mine from the store. And selling them back can be a hassle - they often won't take a book that's been used by several owners, especially if, like Steph's students, you're a big marker and highlighter. Plus, half the time a new edition has come out, and they won't take it back because next year they won't need it.

I had problems selling that way.

Using half.com, the facebook market, or another campus exchange system can work a bit better for finding books or buyers, but it's a lot of hassle. I did it some. I usually didn't bother.

If you resell it to the bookstore, you'll get practically nothing, but most colleges have student-run Craigslist type boards for reselling directly to other students.

Where were those when I was in college?

Oh yeah, no internets back then. I feel very old.

Oh, yes, no internets back then. When I explained to one of my students that I only got an email address my last year in college, and then it was only an intranet, you should have seen the look of horror on his face. I then further blew his mind by telling him that we had to register with scan tron forms He begged me to stop. Heh. evil cackle.

It's kind of amazing. I wonder how I found stuff out before the internets? I mean, between Google and Wikipedia I look stuff up all day long every day, from just-for-the-heck-of-it interesting stuff to phone numbers, times of stores opening, maps & directions.

It's hard to remember how I got along pre-Internet, even though I can still bore my kids with "When I was a kid we didn't have..." stories.