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International Law

: Misleading Advertising Law

Can Kindle Replace Text Books?

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Is the Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7" Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) a disruptive device for the textbook market?

A technology which displaces conventional methods of trading, and in the process drives out the previous winners -who usually have a monopoly like power- is disruptive.

For example, Wikipedia was disruptive with respect to printed encyclopedias.

Twenty years ago, personal computer operating system software was disruptive with respect to mainframes.

Youtube may be disruptive with respect to television.

Craigslist is disruptive to printed newspapers with resepct to classified ads.

Zune was not disruptive because people found Zune's method of "sharing" music too clumsy in comparison.

Each disruptive technology allows the consumer to obtain at better price, free many times, a product that is just as good in value as the previous product.

The new product is not better, probably worse, but a price you cannot ignore.

Bob Sutton had a nice overview and discussed whether Kindle was a disruptive technology.

My argument is that Kindle threatens the established textbook market, because textbooks can be treated as software, and rental items. You only want the text for one course, you rent it.

You want revisions, Kindle updates your textbook automatically. Or, as in the recent case of Orwell's 1984, Amazon deletes your textbook.

More specifically, Amazon should do the following:

1. Contact every college textbook author and advise that all new editions would only be kindle e-books.

2. Drive every reseller of old textbooks out of the market by selling a bundle of freshman textbooks with a Kindle - with a rebate of 50% for every textbook that they no longer wanted on their Kindle.

Treat books as a combination of time dated shareware, and unlimited but not free software updates for the real deal.

3. Gently raise the cost of updates, realizing I was a monopolist. And from time to time, simply give away a ton of Kindles, in order to garner public love for when the DoJ came after me on antitrust grounds.

Recently, two other influential thinkers came to a similar conclusion, but for different reasons.

Seth Goodin, a big fan of Kindle X, a moderate fan of Kindle 2, agrees with me about the potential disruptiveness of Kindle for the textbook market.

"Demolish the textbook market as soon as possible by publishing open source textbooks for free. It's only natural that profit-minded professors will work to replace this by [being a publisher]."

Jordan Furlong, writing at Law21.ca, has another view about the disruptive force of Kindle.

"Legal publishers wouldn't be able to sell annual or subsequent editions of popular texts; but they would be able to open up a whole new market of real-time knowledge refreshment.

The speed and accuracy of updates could become points of competition between publishers (a category that could include the established giants as well as upstart individuals or bloggers).

In addition to downloading the new Supreme Court ruling, a publisher could also offer access to an analysis of the decision by its in-house expert, perhaps as a value-added part of the user's monthly subscription that enables the downloads."

Open access, speed and accuracy of updates, and ease of use all come together in the Kindle to make it a serious threat to the established text book market.

Professor Brainbridge, a noted legal texbook writer, is a fan of Amazon's decision to delete unauthorized books, noting:

"Looking at the problem from the perspective of an author who royalties are a very large percentage of his annual income and an avid Kindle user, I'm totally okay with the the differences between real books and e-books.

As it is, the used book market takes a huge chunk out of my annual royalties. The drop off from the first year of a new edition to the second can be as high as 30%, for example.

I can't imagine the hit my royalties would take if e-books of my texts were available without strong DRM.

But it seems safe to assume that anything remotely resembling an e-book Napster would be a disaster from my perspective.

My assumption is that it would make the hit we currently take from the used book market look like chicken feed.

The enormous amount of time and effort put into writing and updating the books simply would no longer be worth it."

Case Western Reserve University students will be among the first in the nation to use textbooks on the new Kindle electronic reader next fall, using a large-screen version of the device to be unveiled today in New York.

"Thing is, writes Fowler, owning an e-book is more akin to licensing a piece of software than it is to owning a bound volume: access comes with fine-print terms of service, and often digital rights management software to ensure that you abide by the rules."

Licensing textbooks is going to make Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7" Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) the disruptive force, I predict it can be.