Academic books are $60 to $120 each and weigh many pounds. If they can get even half of the academic books ported to the Kindle this is a big win for students, even though it is expensive. - Robert Scoble

I can imagine universities giving Kindles to first-year students or at least offering them to students at a reduced cost. I don't think we'll see a huge reduction in the price of text books, because you will still be paying for publisher costs. - Nathan Finley

My books from school had a lot of text marked in yellow or pink, to remember what was important. I think it would take a lot to get use to using the Kindle - Asgeir

Asgeir - you can bookmark, highlight and annotate text in Kindle - Jamie

scoble: are the text books free then? - Riaz Kanani

@Asgeir It is really only a matter of a couple of years that students will have NOT known that Kindles and other readers haven't always been around. To them it will be a natural to tag, search, share, etc. - Jim Espinoza

It really is expensive. And you know textbooks are still going to cost $100+ each. - Barry Biddlecomb from twhirl

If the books are cut down to about half the price because of the kindle, every student will get one. I need to spend 200+ on books every quarter, and that's with buying used and looking for the best deal. - robbie nakamura

the text books don't have to be *free*. if you spend $900 on textbooks a year (http://www.uspirg.org/higher-...), the Amazon textbooks just have to be 14% cheaper than the paper versions (saving you $126/year) for the Kindle DX to pay for itself after 4 years. - Karim

good analysis here of why it's good for the publishers, too: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL... basically, without printing and shipping costs, they can sell books at lower cost but with a higher margin. Amazon is trying to do to books what Apple did to music. :-) - Karim

good point karim - ebooks are cheaper typically than books.. so could be good if text books see the same level of discounting - Riaz Kanani

so what is going to happened to libraries, if books in the future is digital?. Perhaps one day we can rent a book and read it on the Kindle? - Asgeir

The Kindle is still a novelty until it comes with colour and supports graphic novels/comics, with backing from Marvel and DC. And drops to about $199. Then they'll be flying off the shelves. As it is now it's an expensive gimmick. What amazes me about the DX is you now need two hands to read. Can't be long until the market is flooded with cheaper, smaller alternatives. Or more likely books become legally available for download on similarly-priced (or now cheaper) netbooks, which of course offer a lot more to the 'broke student', delivering everything they need in one package. - Shéa Bennett

Kindle should come in 2 flavors IMHO... Wireless G and EVDO. I already have sprint internet on my phone. I won't buy a kindle to pay for a connection I already have. - Gunny doesn't side-hug™

Students already have laptops: they need PDFs not another large device to lug. Physical books sell used @ 50% eBooks are new only - Tyler Ham

My experience in the UK at least is that the ebook versions are not cheaper, can usually find printed ones heavily discounted. Although we can't actually get the Kindle, only other brands like Sony and have to buy ebooks from Waterstones or WHSmith. Will Amazon launch in UK soon? - Steven Horner from Nambu

I pay a $95 fee per class for e-books at the University of Phoenix - if I could get them on a Kindle, for half the cost (assuming a partnership between Amazon and U of P), I'd do it in a blink - William Harryman

I'd love something that is, well, like a book. Small and foldable. I couldn't take this on the train to read. People are used to reading books why not design to feel like one. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

Amazon is still only aiming this at the American market, once they go global, it will be quite a different story. - chris demeyere

Is 500$ too much for being able to sit in the sun, save trees and finally read programming papers without code snippets getting messed up? - Thomas Amberg

If my textbooks were available on a kindle... I'd pay up to a grand for one. The kindle is reusable from year to year... my text books... not so much. I pay just about two grand a year for text books. - Joshua Schnell

Core texts are significantly cheaper in the UK, and unless you can resell on your core texts second hand (which you don't seem to be able to do with an electronic text in this case), it's going to be a difficult case to prove for the academic text in Kindle - David Bird

you can resell a second-hand Kindle just like a physical book. :-) i'd guess that licensing on the DRM'ed books doesn't allow resale, but i can imagine a black market for those. how much would a freshman pay for a 4-year-old Kindle that already had every single textbook they were going to need in the next four years on it? :-) and what if the textbooks were already annotated with "this question will appear on the final" notes? NOW how much would you pay? lol - Karim

Karim, that's genius. Could you imagine universities and colleges building them into their programs? Students would get a preloaded kindle with their course materials in 1st year. Man, that would be a game changer. - Joshua Schnell

It's a no-brainer for all economic reasons laid out by many above commenters as replacement for dead tree textbooks. So only shoe to fall is MIT, UC Berkeley, CalTech and Princeton (above all- Bezos alma mater) to be part of a discount university marketing program launched by Amazon. Bring it on. - Lisa thorell