Textbooks, iPads and e-books oh my!

I am an Amazon Affiliate.

Unless, you have been under a rock, it has been a crazy couple of weeks in the industry of old school media (meaning books.)

The iPad came out, further questioning the delivery of books. When I first saw it, I has flashbacks of the Minority Report scene with Tom Cruise when her was weaving in and out of the DC Metro and someone had a tablet like device reading the “New York Times” and the headlines and front page story kept changing. Are we part of the way there with this device?

However, in terms of academia, this all remains to be seen. Do I see student’s flocking to buy the device? No.
Students multitask and the peanut gallery has deemed that this is not a multitasking device.

In “the stuff I wish I had when I was a student category,” Barnes and Noble is rolling out textbook rentals. This is a good move because at the end of the semester, students would be lucky to get a quarter of the price that they paid for the books at the beginning of the semester.

Finally long standing academic publisher Macmillan, is in negotiations with Amazon to offer ebook content.

Folks aren’t exactly on the fence to see if this will be the “game changer” like what people are touting the iPad to publishing ad iPod to music.

As the group Swing Out Sister says in it recent album, Beautiful Mess says, “Where we’re going is anybody’s guess…”.