Did they figure out the text2speech problems? Thats the only reason Kindle was basically ignored from universities as they violate ADA laws. IE: Blind people cant read e-books if text2speech accessiblity doesnt work. iPhones and iPads have this built in.

Good. The textbook business is the biggest sham tied to higher education.

Buh bye to the price-gouging college bookstores.

They absolutely should do this!

I long for the day when Amazon goes Netflix and comes up with a $7.99 all you can read subscription plan.

@2, not true!!! It is perfectly legit to buy at textbook for $200.00 then sell it back getting only $25.00 and then have the store re-sell the same fucking book at a used price of $175.00.

Textbooks are one area where the Kindle is an abject failure -- a total, all-encompassing failure. There is no kind of book in the world where page numbers, indexing, charts and graphs, all the stuff the Kindle can't do for shit, are more important. "OK, open your books to the fuzzy blob at about location 28736". Not going to work.

Stupid you have to carry the books around on a tablet. Implants using holographic imaging make this business model look absurd.

College bookstores have been doing this since at least Winter quarter. I don't think Barnes & Noble have anything to worry about.

@6 - I read they added real page numbers. Did that not happen?

I am possibly one of the few people out there that likes their campus bookstore. But I go to an art school, so we only end up buying a few weird, specialized texts that tend to be hard to find used online. I've always been able to get cheaper prices on used books there than I could find online.

Also they are an independent outfit with a really friendly store cat :3

I ended up buying most of my textbooks in the bookstore. The one quarter I tried ordering online most didn't show up until halfway through the quarter and one didn't show up at all. I had to buy them at the bookstore, anyway. Plus, it was really important to me not to have a book with tons of highlighting and writing and I could find the best copies in the bookstore.

@1: What problems are you referring to? I believe the feature was marked as "beta" as companies complained and felt it was eating into their audiobook sales, but I hadn't heard of any specific issues.

I have a Kindle, and I hate it.

I'm 3/4 of the way through my Master's degree. While every time I have to buy books, I feel like I should be saying "leave the money on the dresser on your way out" I also have all of my text books for when it's time to write my thesis. 30 days to 360 days rental doesn't give me that option.

Yay Anthro degree, my books were hella cheap compared to my physics and math major friends. And the books were fairly unique and not just a rehash of the prior version. Often they were the only version. Boo text books, yay academic lit.

Of course I think all my engineering friends have pretty good jobs these days while i'm looking at getting a vocational/professional certificate.

Yeah, as much as I love my Kindle, I wouldn't buy textbooks for it. It's too hard to annotate and make notes.

@9 Some books have real page numbers, some do not. It's hit or miss.