Amazon to Revolutionize Textbook Market?

Textbooks are a necessary evil of the college experience.  They’re heavy, and in a single semester a university student can spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars just on required textbooks.  University bookstores give students pennies on the dollar to buy back books, while keeping used book prices at 70-85% of new books.   I always tell my students to look for used copies on Half.com, but publishers release new versions regularly to help keep prices high and stifle the used book market.

Well, there is some promising news on the horizon.  Amazon has announced that they are releasing a new version of the Kindle, designed to appeal to academic publishers.  If this works as planned, students will be able keep all their textbooks on a single portable device, just like they already do for music and video.  Obvious features the new Kindle will need are improved highlighting and note taking capabilities.  Cost effective color ePaper is probably still a couple years away, but that would definitely be beneficial for academic eBooks.  I’m curious to see how pricing will work with for this new endeavor, especially since there won’t be a secondary market for used eTextbooks.  Look for the Amazon announcement this Wednesday.