Barnes & Noble and Amazon in the Text-Book Business

Text-BooksForget about libraries or college bookstores as the place to get your college textbooks. That’s the old, antiquated way. Now, students can “rent” their text-books from Barnes & Noble campus bookstores or purchase books through Amazon for their Kindles. If you haven't read it already, definitely check out my colleague Sarajean's article detailing other "textbook rental" places, which, not surprisingly, are cheaper than Barnes & Noble's.

The “rent” for the books from Barnes & Noble does not appear to be cheap- it costs 42.5% of the original book price for the whole entire term or semester. The normal cost for university and college textbooks as it stands now for the average college student is ridiculous. According to this article, textbooks for one year cost $667.00 for a typical college student, so students would save roughly 450 bucks if they took part in the Barnes & Noble program.

I’m not sure how well renting text-books would work for some majors. When I was a student, I valued my “right” to take notes in the margins of my textbooks and enjoyed the notes of the students before me when I used previously-owned books. Somehow, I don’t think that Barnes & Noble would think too highly of that. Also, university textbooks are often a hot item for campus thieves- I wonder what Barnes & Noble will have as policy for lost, stolen, or damaged textbooks. I’m guessing that the fines will not be cheap.  

Renting books has become more popular, but I have to wonder if this is Barnes & Noble’s response to Amazon’s decision to make more textbooks available for the Kindle, which definitely would be advantageous for students. Not only do the books cost less, students can walk to and from their classes without carrying 200 pounds of textbooks.

Of course, taking notes  and highlighting in your Kindle reader also isn’t as comfortable as taking notes in your textbooks, but it can be done. (When I’ve tried it on my own Kindle, I’ve found it more awkward than I thought it would be.) Additionally, there is no guarantee that Amazon will have your particular available for downloading, although that might very well change in the near future.

There is quite a bit of speculation that the Apple Tablet will be the best solution for reading when it finally debuts, but with the secrecy surrounding the details about it, it’s hard to tell just yet and little is known about how it will affect academia.