I remember reading (couldn't find the link) that University texts were about the same price on kindle as hardcover. That has got to be a big mistake.
- University texts are expensive because of the short runs. Authors get only a couple of $ for $100 sales.
- University texts are heavy.
- Students are the ones carrying multiple books around daily. (all those scenarios of not needing to pack 10 books on holiday...)
Throw in the fact that students are a great segment to introduce these sorts of products to & it seems crazy that they haven't targeted colleges as the inroad for this product.
I mean if you could convince Universities that:
- Lecturers can prescribe aby books they want without worrying about being stuck with early editions or the print houses running out.
- Lecturers can publish books themselves without a minimum run & keep 4X the profit from 1/4 of the cost to students.
I mean they could almost make it a mandatory buy. Consider that over 3-4 years you spend approx $1000 (including buying & selling second hand), if they could sell college texts for $20, the total cost to students would be about 1/2 of the cost of hardcovers with reduced hassles.
Amazon seems not to give a damn about that market. I think that they didn't do well in negotiations with publishers. Apple might have done a better job there I think.
Well, it might.
Where I went, the campus bookstore was a co-op anyway. I think not for profit. I'd imagine for many campuses they just cost money to keep alive.
But You'd probably still need them to an extent.
Apple can make kindle out of the Kindle with a free (or cheap) PDF/eBook reader for iPhone/iPod touch. Millions of people already have the devices, many millions more already have thousands of PDFs on their hard drives and downloading them can be as easy as using iTunes.
Yep, We know, could they please use another color scheme. Currently there are 3 floating around the office and all of them look hideous with all the finger prints on them.
Color schemes I can take or leave, but what really bugs me about my Kindle is the fact that both of the bottom corners are sharp. I have yet to be able to come up with a comfortable way of holding it that doesn't result in the corners digging into my hands. This seems like a pretty obvious mistake to me, so hopefully they will correct it.
Because of the nature of the e-ink display, (it pushes physical ink blobs to and from the surface of the screen), the unit does not use any power if you are not turning pages and not using the wireless connection.
Not quite true. It does use some power, b/c the battery will eventually end up dead, even if you have the wireless connection off, if you forget to turn off the main power switch.
