The original Amazon Kindle reader – launched in November of 2007 – didn’t make much of an impact on the academic community. The revised Kindle 2 – which started shipping in February 2009 – didn’t really improve matters very much – not from an educationalist’s viewpoint at least.

The relatively high purchase price of the reader may be a little too much for many students, but that’s probably an issue which could be worked around. The main problem is that the 6” screen on both the original Kindle and the Kindle 2 – whilst more than adequate for reading normal books – is just too petite for academic textbooks, most of which contain diagrams and illustrations.

However, with the launch of the Kindle DX on June 10 2009, things may change – and very quickly. The new DX has a substantially bigger screen, 9.7” measured from corner to corner. It also has an accelerometer fitted which allows users to flip from portrait to landscape automatically when the reader is rotated. Amazon is marketing the DX as the ideal solution for readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks.

Amazon has already entered into partnerships with a number of colleges and universities, including Princeton, Case Western, Arizona State and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. These establishments could offer the Kindle hardware at a discount to some students and it does seem like a good way for Amazon to test the emerging market for higher education electronic books.

According to the National Association of College Stores, college book sales figures for the year 2007-08 amounted to $5.4 billion. It’s a huge market which would be attractive both to Amazon, who would intend to secure a good portion of these sales, and for the educational establishments, who would hope to save substantial amounts of money and to have a more effective method of keeping academic textbooks current and up to date.

By way of an example of the types of savings that could be made, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, recently announced that his state would commence providing digital text books in the Fall of 2009. For a school district numbering 10,000 high school students, a yearly saving of $2 million is predicted. Savings may vary for tertiary education due to the slightly different nature and cost of text books – but the savings are definitely there for the taking. Money saved in this manner would hopefully be made available for use in other areas.

With potential profits for ebook reader vendors, and savings for educational bodies, it seems probable that there will be some intense competition in this important market segment in the very near future. At this time Amazon do seem to be in the driving seat, but Plastic Logic, News Corp. and Hearst are all rumored to be readying large format ebook readers for launch in 2010. Apple has also announced that they will be launching a tablet type computer, well suited for reading ebooks, in the next twelve months.

Apart from profits for Amazon and its competitors and savings for the educational establishment, it is to be hoped that individual students will benefit as a result of investment of monies that would not otherwise be available. The availability of cheaper, more frequently updated textbooks should also be a plus and, in future, it seems likely that different, more interactive, educational possibilities may be developed .