Amazon.com last year released the Kindle e-book reader that offers wireless download of digital books, newspapers and blogs for easy reading on the go.  Strangely, there has not been any movement on making textbooks available on the Kindle.  One reason for this is that the Kindle has a screen that’s too small for reading the dense text typical of a college textbook.  Amazon.com also has not worked with textbook publishers to make their books available in Kindle format, though you could get a PDF version of a textbook and convert it to Kindle format using 3rd party software if you wanted.

Recently pictures have been leaked of a new Kindle 2 device expected to be available early in 2009.  The leaked pictures show a Kindle that’s similar in size to the current Kindle.  However, a writer for the Seattle Pi got confirmation from Amazon.com that the company would be looking to make a version of the Kindle geared towards students available sometime next year.  TechCrunch speculates that such a device would have a larger 8.5 x 11 screen.  It would make a lot of sense for Amazon.com to enter the textbook market from a business perspective, it’s a $5.5 billion a year market.  Students are currently irate at the continuing rapid cost increase for textbooks and for as long as college kids have had to lug textbooks the sheer weight and bulkiness of textbooks have been a pain.

I for one would love it if Amazon released a Kindle 2 that might make a viable e-reader for textbooks, so long as they can get publishers to set a fair price for distribution of those textbooks.  I’m not talking $50 for a digital version of a book, it would need to be a bit lower.  After all, we can buy used textbooks for $100 and sell them back at about $50, so the savings wouldn’t be there.  A Kindle 2 for students would need to be usable (allow for easy searching, markup of text, highlighting, creating virtual stickies/tabs) and price effective.  Either way, can’t wait to see what Amazon has in store for students with the Kindle 2 next year