Originally written for eBookGuru - The Digital Magazine Devoted to eBooks

A Kindle in Every Backpack. This is the title of a proposal by the Democratic Leadership Council that argues that the government should provide students with Kindles. The proposal argues that this could improve education quality and save money.

It’s an intriguing concept but according the proposal traditional textbooks cost $109 per student, rising to $115 per student in 2016. Currently the Kindle 2 costs significantly more than that for the hardware alone, not to mention the cost of the content. The Kindle DX, which is better suited for use as a textbook replacement, costs almost $200 more than the Kindle 2. Admittedly if a Kindle was provided to every student this would result in lower costs but it’s hard to see the economic benefits.

The proposal states that the costs of eTextbook materials would be about $200 initially and then drop to $80 by 2012. Looking at the proposal here and now however, the comparison is an outlay of $499 ($299 for the Kindle, $200 for the eTextbooks) vs. an existing cost of $109 for a difference of $390. It gets even worse if you propose using the Kindle DX, rising to a difference of $580. That’s anywhere from 3½ to over 5 times more costly per student. Or to put it another way for the same cost as equipping a student with a Kindle, you could equip another 3 - 5 students with traditional textbooks.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great idea. I just think that it’s perhaps a little ahead of its time. eBooks are still a nascent market and we really don’t know where the market is going to end up.

Reports of cracked or frozen Kindle screens don’t inspire a lot of confidence in the proposal either. Even investing in the cover for the Kindle doesn’t seem to help, as a recent class action lawsuit against Amazon attests. Given the high cost of ownership, most Kindle owners are very protective of the devices yet they are still having problems. Somehow I can’t see a group of school students, for whom the device would be essentially free, being more careful.

Flexible screens like the Readius could be the answer to this problem but the recent bankruptcy of Polymer Vision, the company behind the Readius, means that it will probably be a long wait before this technology becomes mainstream.

Given that plans are already underway to make the Kindle DX available to University students, it would seem prudent to wait for the results of this pilot program. The pilot program will

…evaluate the impact of the device on the learning experience, determine if faculty delivered the information in new ways, and determine if students approach their reading and assignments differently.

As much as I would love to see kids with Kindles, I think there are too many unknowns. Advances in technology and lower production costs could change the landscape for eBook readers dramatically as more people start to use them. After all, look how long cell phones have been around and how much they’ve changed today as they morph into smartphones. Perhaps the eTextbook reader of the future will be a touch Netbook. To me this makes more sense for students, who would likely use the device for more than just reading. Given that Netbooks are comparable in terms of cost to a a Kindle DX, it’s hard to argue for a single function device, as good as it is.

Still, the very fact that this was proposed is a good indication of the strength of the eBook market. Regardless of how we end up reading eBooks in the future, it seems pretty clear that eBooks and eTextbooks are the future of reading.