University of Texas El Paso Selling Kindle and e-books

Here is an October 18 article on University of Texas El Paso bookstore selling Amazon Kindle family.   In partnership with a third party digital textbook provider they hope to see more students turning to digital for their coursework.   While the sales were not great within the first two weeks of launch, Yolanda Torres, textbook manager at the bookstore, remains hopeful that UTEP students will soon resort to e-readers to avoid textbook hassles, according to the story.  "As of right now, we haven't sold any. I suppose the kids either prefer physical texts or don't know about them," Torres said. "We do not sell them online and the only way we advertised is in-store and the sign outside the doors."

E-Readers Aren’t Ready for School Yet

College students will likely continue to watch the development of e-readers from the sidelines because the devices simply aren’t yet suited for use on campus. That’s the conclusion of a blogger for the Seattle Times, who looks at the findings from a pilot study using Amazon’s Kindle DX at the University of Washington.

After seven months of use, fewer than 40% of the computer sciences and engineering graduate students taking part in the study used the device for homework. They found the Kindle DX to be poor for note-taking, and said skimming text and looking up references were difficult.

While those are all problems that could be fixed with future upgrades, the study also suggests the digital text disrupts a learning technique called cognitive mapping, which allows readers to use physical cues, such as the location of words on the page, to help retain and recall information.

A possible solution may be found in tablet computers such as the iPad, because the Apple device is able to bolster conventional text and images with interactive and multimedia content, according to Fast Company.

Kindle Adding Page Numbers, Note-Sharing

Kindles may soon be sporting some new features that address short-comings raised by the higher education market. According to Amazon's recent posting on the Kindle Daily Post blog, software updates for the Kindle and Kindle 3G will enable e-books to display page numbers that correspond to the same pages in the print edition of the book.

That may seem like a relatively minor improvement to some, but higher-ed researchers need to be able to provide publication pages when they cite sources for a paper or book. Right now they can’t do that with an e-book.

Even more importantly, the page numbering feature may make the Kindle more attractive for classroom use. Some college bookstores have reported their professors asked them not to make e-books available for their textbook adoptions because the lack of page numbers creates problems in making sure the class is literally on the same page. With the updated Kindle, students could use either print or e-book versions and remain in sync, page-wise.

As another new feature, the Kindle upgrade will also allow users to share their book annotations and highlights with other Kindle users.

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Additional commentary:

I once read that page numbers did not emerge as a concept in printed books until about 40 years after the printing press had become commercially viable. At the time, it was the scholarly community who identified the need. While Amazon's page numbering development has already been accomplished by others in the space, the development does signal two things. First, that we will continue to adapt current and new technologies to past ways of doing things. Perhaps there is a better way to cite a reference than the print-page equivalent. Second, it seems that Amazon is working to address short-comings in the Kindle identified by the higher ed market, and so they may still have plans in the work for a new reader or other technology that will support textbook users in the future.

e-readers expected to be a top seller this holiday season

E-readers are expected to be a popular gift this holiday season and many e-reader companies have expanded the distribution of their devices to stores like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart. In addition, Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble, have come up with new ways to promote their devices on the web or in the stores.

In an article from The New York Times, Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, says, “This is the tipping-point season for e-readers, there’s no question. A lot more books are going to be sold in e-book format. It also means that a lot fewer people are going to be shopping in bookstores.”

Forrester Research predicts that about nine million e-readers are currently in circulation in the United States and this could increase to 10.3 million after the holidays.

As mentioned previously, according to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, e-readers rank fifth on the holiday wish lists of adults.

Kindle e-book gifting program

On Friday, Amazon announced that consumers can now give Kindle e-books as gifts to anyone with an e-mail address. Consumers that do not own Kindle devices can download the free Kindle app to their PC, Mac, Apple, Blackberry, or Android devices to read the e-books.

Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Amazon Kindle, noted, "We are thrilled to make it easier than ever for our customers to give their favorite Kindle book to a friend or family member as a gift. We're making this functionality available in time for the holidays to offer an easy, stress free holiday shopping option for anyone - not just Kindle owners."

Best Kindle e-books of 2010

Amazon recently posted a list of its 100 bestselling e-book titles for 2010. They also have a second list that shows the top 100 editors’ picks.

Digital Happenings

While the blog highlights many of the digital happenings affecting our industry, there is often more going on than we have a chance to cover. Here are some links to interesting articles from the past few days.

• Apple sold 4.19 million iPads last quarter bringing its total sales to almost 7.5 million since April. Interestingly, the iPad sales last quarter were greater than the sales for the entire line of Macintosh computers which also hit a record high at nearly 3.9 million units. Some analysts are now predicting that Apple will sell up to 40 million iPads next year.
• According to an article from Adage, Apple has also expanded distribution for the iPad to retailers such as Target, Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Best Buy. Previously, the iPad was available at 300 Apple stores and now it will be available at 8,000 stores across the country.
• A recent survey of students by the Associated Press and mtvU found that 57 percent of students said that life without computers and cell phones would be stressful but 25 percent said it would be a relief.
• An article from The New York Times says that Sharp is scaling back its laptop operations to focus on tablets. Sharp plans to launch 5.5-inch and 10-inch screen Android tablets in December. In addition, Sharp will launch an e-book store that will give users access to 30,000 e-books, newspapers, and magazines. A second article from MacWorld provides more information about the tablets.
• According to a TechCrunch article, Amazon says that it continues to sell more Kindle books than print books. Amazon says that it has sold more than three times as many Kindle books from January to September of this year than it did for the same nine months of 2009. Amazon also says that sales for its latest Kindle device have already surpassed total Kindle device sales from the holiday season last year (October through December 2009).
• A recent article from Publishers Weekly discusses the challenges associated with formatting e-books.

Amazon announces a lending program for Kindle e-books

According to an announcement on Amazon’s website, later this year it will introduce an e-book lending program for Kindle users. Users will be able to loan an e-book to a friend that uses a Kindle device or the Kindle app. The loan period will be for 14 days and the lender will not be able to read the book during that time. The announcement notes that publishers and rights holders will determine whether or not their titles are available for lending. Barnes & Noble has a similar lending program in place for its Nook device.

Amazon also announced that it will make Kindle newspapers and magazines available for reading on the Kindle apps. This functionality will be available for Apple devices initially and for Android devices or other apps in the future. This functionality may encourage users to stay within the Kindle app for all of their reading on various devices.