I think Kindle would be wonderful to reduce the ridiculous costs of college textbooks.They won't get us though. I collect signed first editions and my wife collects pop-up books. Kindle or Google that! I do love the smell of old
paper too.Terry Sanford
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Just as a point of order, there are plenty of textbooks on Kindle at very high prices: $40 to $200 I've noted. The cost of Kindle editions are decided by the author/publisher. They are not all super cheap just because they contain no paper. Whenever we buy a book, hopefully this goes without saying, it's the intellectual content of the book we're buying, not the physical paper and cover. If an author feels his work on Kindle is worth $100, he's welcome to charge that. If he has a specific group of people who HAVE to read his work to accomplish a specific task, you can be sure the price of that information will be comparatively high. Right now, there are many many titles not available on Kindle, and others at very low even no cost at all, you just download them in a matter of seconds. I doubt that this circumstance will exist for long. Many new books are released on Kindle at the same time or even before the published book comes out. As the price of the
device comes down, the price of the content is likely to increase. I imagine that someone will give the device away eventually so that people will buy the content. I see the advent of e-publishing rather like Prohibition was for bootleggers: it's a short window of opportunity for ambitious writers to get their work to an appreciative audience and perhaps make a name for themselves. When e-publishing becomes the accepted norm, it'll be business as usual again. Unlike Prohibition, I doubt this will take 10 years.
Patrick King
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