The Kindle Factor

An early Kindle adopter, who is also using the Kindle to save students text book money and integrating into his pedagogy, lays out some of the things he's learned, and some of the considerations those who want to move in that direction need to think about.

"One of the benefits of the Kindle is that learners can replace expensive textbooks with digital books in a format read by the Kindle. For example, for a Knowledge Organizations course I will lead in the Fall, one hardcover textbook, Organizations as Knowledge Systems (2004, Tsoukas, H. & Mylonopoulos, Eds.) currently costs $89.95 at retail, $71.97 from Amazon.com, and $63.96 in its Kindle version. That’s a 28.9% savings over the retail cost of the book. Another textbook, Theory U (2009, Scharmer, C. O.), in paper, currently costs $28.95 at retail, $26.05 from Amazon, and $15.92 in its Kindle version.

The sum of those savings would be $39.02, or a 32.9% savings over retail for both books."

Read the full article here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/06/15/crowell