Used Books Blog

My recent post on Textbook Torrents has been both popular and controversial. Though still off line the latest seems to indicate we haven’t seen the end of Textbook Torrents.

In the interim, I’m compiling a list of sites where students can gain access to free textbooks.

Textbook Revolution

“TBR’s mission is to drive the adoption of free textbooks by teachers and professors. We want to get these books into classrooms. Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world.”

Wikibooks

“Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003, since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 30,398 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you!”

Open Text Book

“Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation”

Scribd

“Through Scribd.com, iPaper, and the Scribd Platform, Scribd is changing the way people view, publish, and monetize documents. Through our vast library of content and our unique document display technology, we hope to unlock the information in the world’s documents and make it readily accessible to everyone.”

Scribd doesn’t specifically aim to provide free textbooks but there seem to be many available. Searches for specific titles or subjects often bring back a substantial list of results. Outside of textbooks, Scribd can be used as a deep source of student contributed notes.

Nearly all of the sites above are not in violation of any copyright laws. Scribd is the exception, but only because they allow users to upload materials. However, they seem responsive to DMCA take down notices.

This list is not comprehensive, but I believe represents the largest and best of the bunch. Others are extremely narrow in focus, abandoned or overrun with advertising ploys. Please let me know if I’ve missed any that merit inclusion on this list.

CrunchGear is reporting that Kindle 2.0 could be released as early as October.

The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface. The source told us that Amazon has “skipped three or four generations,” comparing the old Kindle to the 1st gen iPod and the new version to something like the sexy iPod Mini.

The second new model, which is shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper, is considerably bigger than the current model and should be available next year.

Both models should come in multiple colors and may be aimed at younger readers.

I’m particularly interested in the new model, rumored to be shaped like a standard piece of paper. That, coupled with color, make me believe that Amazon may be targeting textbooks.

As I’ve written previously, the textbook market is perfect for Kindle. The new size and color make it both easy to carry with traditional books and ‘cool’ to boot. (I frankly don’t get the color issue myself, but the demand for pink is tremendous.)

However, the release date of October is a huge miss for this textbook season, which starts just about … now, and gets really big in August until finally petering out in September. So the signals here are a bit mixed.

No doubt Amazon wants the updated first version to be available for the holiday shopping bonanza. That makes complete sense. But if the second model is essentially a Kindle textbook, I just can’t see it being a hot gift. I mean, it’s not socks but getting a digital eTextbook reader isn’t exactly ‘fun’ either.

The drum beat for digital textbooks is getting louder with the closure of Textbook Torrents and Amazon would be wise to aggressively jump into this market as quickly as possible.

Kindle sales have doubled, or so Amazon would like to have you believe. A recent Time story reported the following:

According to a source at Amazon, “on a title-by-title basis, of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form, Kindle sales now make up over 12% of sales for those titles.”

In late May at the D: All Things Digital Conference, Tim O’Reilly reported Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos saying that “kindle sales represent 6% of all Amazon sales for the 125,000 titles that are available on kindle.”

The problem is that these percentages are delivered in a vacuum. There is no indication as to true sales figures. Here’s the issue in a nutshell for those who are statistically challenged.

Let’s say the the 6% figure was based on 1,o00,000 unit sales. That means Kindle sales accounted for 60,000 units. The 12% figure could be based on another time period where unit sales were, say, 800,000. 12% of 800,000 is 96,000 unit sales. So while the percentage of sales rose 100% from 6% t0 12%, actual unit sales only rose 60% from 60,000 to 96,000.

For what time period is each percentage based? Is the 12% figure cumulative? (If so, the June percentage would have to be massive!) Are these based on revenue or unit sales? These are just the basic questions. Never mind the more detailed analysis of unit sales per Kindle, repeat Kindle sales and median channel sales percentage.

It’s hard to believe that investors are willing to take this type of sales obfuscation. We still don’t know how many Kindles were sold! Oh, they were sold out, but it’s a real easy marketing trick to create buzz by selling out a small line of inventory.

You have to ask yourself, why won’t Amazon actually divulge any of the sales data. If it were as great as they make it seem wouldn’t they be shouting it from the rooftops Tarzan style?

Credit Tim O’Reilly and Time’s Josh Quittner for not blindly reporting these ‘figures’ as a success. In particular, I enjoyed Quittner’s opening volley.

Is the Kindle starting to catch fire with consumers? From the Department of Inscrutable Data Points comes word that e-book sales for Amazon’s Kindle — its digital reading device-have doubled during the past two months. Kind of, sort of, maybe.

Others have been less rigorous in their analysis, seeming to trust Amazon on faith and hoping that another iPod like success story is in the making. Convince me Amazon! Just show us the numbers.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Princeton University Press will join other notable University Presses such as Yale University Press, Oxford University Press and The University of California Press in making portions of their catalogs available on Kindle.

University Presses, even the big ones, have often found it difficult to survive, much less flourish. The Kindle could help these struggling presses to find greener pastures. Details on the nature of these relationships is still unknown.

The university presses participating in Kindle were reluctant to describe the specific financial arrangements they have with Amazon (which also declined to discuss them), but said that they were revenue-sharing deals, and that preparing the books for release on Kindle was not particularly burdensome or expensive.

I’d be very interested to know exactly what the revenue sharing deal is at present. Kindle is certainly working hard to make more and more titles available for download. The question is whether this is a type of introductory offer type of deal, sweet at the beginning and then onerous as it moves forward when you’re essentially addicted to the platform. (I’m looking at you Comcast.)

Barbara Fister has a great comment to the Inside Higher Ed piece:

I don’t have any objection to UPs trying this revenue stream (even self-published authors are doing it), but I doubt the Kindle will revolutionize the textbook market.

First, if illustrations and color and permission-based images are problematic, that’s a hurdle. Second, the publisher sets the price, and they haven’t shown much inclination to price electronic versions at a steep enough discount to tempt students in huge numbers. Third — students object to paying a lot for a book that they can’t share or resell, and they won’t be all that thrilled that they can’t buy a used copy. (I’m skeptical that you can download a Kindle book to your computer — isn’t that a violation of their terms of service?)

Add to that students in Montana and Alaska are outta luck (the wireless network that Amazon uses doesn’t reach there) and students would be forced to spend a lot of money for the a gadget that limits their shopping to a single store.

The price is certainly an issue. The Kindle versions come at what seems like a 10% discount. It would take a substantial number of titles to offset the $300+ cost of the Kindle itself. In addition, you can’t resell these books.

In ‘analog’ form, you can sell a number of these titles back to a University Bookstore or independent bookseller for more than 10% of the purchase price. I recall with great glee the end of the semester when I’d sell back my textbooks to the University Bookstore. Not all were accepted and I probably only got 20% to 50% of the original purchase price but … it was enough for a weekend splurge at the local watering hole.

This one currently lands in the A for effort pile, but incomplete as the grade of record.

Textbook Torrents is using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, to let students download textbooks for free. The site not only allows Torrents for those open textbooks but allows users to scan and upload other textbooks.

Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren’t very many scanned texts out there, so let’s change that.

A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it’s fair game.

Sites like Textbook Torrents are reacting to the increasingly high cost of textbooks. According to a 2004 CALPIRG study, the average textbook costs $102 and students spent almost $900 a school year on textbooks. Many believe these prices are artificially high, creating windfall profit centers for publishers on the backs of students who essentially must purchase these textbooks.

The used textbook marketplace has flourished because of these high prices, though the shelf life of a textbook seems to be decreasing as publishers crank out updates and editions on a more regular basis. The Amazon Kindle is also delivering textbooks via digital download.

It’s no surprise that students are using new technology to defray the cost of their education. Obviously the textbook landscape would collapse if the majority of students sourced their textbooks via Torrents - authors need to be compensated, publishers need to run a business.

But publishers shouldn’t squawk too much about these developments. High textbook prices were the accelerant to the flux in the textbook market. Now they’re scrambling to protect their cash cow in the encroaching digital age.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:00pm)

As noted by readers, the textbooktorrents.com website is currently offline. The error data (”not found on this server”) makes me believe that the owner took it down or that the host (DreamHost) took it down. Please note that Google still has pages from textbooktorrents.com in their index. Google hasn’t banned the site, it’s simply not ranking high because there’s no longer any relevant content on these pages.

I’m guessing this disappearing act is due to legal pressure brought by publishers. The domain doesn’t expire until January 2011. Perhaps textbooktorrents.com will come back when a new host is secured … or not if the publisher pressure was simply too much to handle.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:57pm)

I emailed DreamHost in what I thought would be a vain attempt to gain some information on the Textbook Torrents situation. To my pleasant surprise, DreamHost responded to my inquiry within the hour. Below is the text of that email:

We received very long DMCA takedown notices from publishers of the content in question. The site was further closed down due to violations of our Terms of Service due to it’s illegal facilitation of the distribution of copyrighted content without the copyright owners consent.

While I sympathize with students and the cost of textbooks, you can’t fault DreamHost for pulling the plug. Based on the information provided above, I’d be surprised if any major US host would touch Textbook Torrents at this point.

I’ve been getting more email lately which isn’t a bad thing in my book - keep it coming! One from Fiona King caught my attention and will interest readers who find me through a variety of Kindle searches.

I’m not particularly fond of the Kindle overall, but I do see it being useful for students and textbooks in particular. Hack Your Kindle: 100+ Tips, Resources, and Tutorials to Get More Out of the Amazon Kindle is a good list and I feel better promoting it because it’s on a college-themed site. Sure, it’s link bait, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good or useful.

For easy reference, here’s a list of all my posts mentioning Kindle.

The 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report by Yankelovich and Scholastic contains some interesting statistics that may provide insight about the future of books in the digital age.

• 75% of kids age 5-17 agree with the statement, “No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper”
• 62% of kids surveyed say they prefer to read books printed on paper rather than on a computer or a handheld device.

Those are some pretty shocking(ly good) statistics given the prevalence of online media and handheld devices. I’ve blogged previously that eBooks and the Kindle have an uphill battle because of the passive nature of books and the lack of a motivating agent of change for the medium. Books are already portable, can be printed in color, and don’t get better due to new technology (e.g. - Dolby or HD.)

To be fair, there does seem to be a place for digital books.

• Two thirds of kids age 9-17 believe that within the next 10 years, most books which are read for fun will be read digitally – either on a computer or on another kind of electronic device. Eighty-seven percent of kids think people will be able to tag and share their favorite parts of books with others.

So perhaps there is room for both eBooks and the musty regular old book. The problem may be whether the digital book market can be a large enough and viable business.

Ready for some more good news?

• A majority of kids say they like to read books for fun and that reading books for fun is important. Most kids perceive a correlation between reading and success.
• One in four kids age 5–17 reads books for fun every day (high frequency reader), and more than half of kids read books for fun at least two to three times a week.

A part of me doesn’t believe these statistics given all the doom and gloom you often hear about reading and literacy. But the study was done to a 90% confidence level. It’s gratifying to see books still being linked to success.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade, showed a correlation between the number of books in a child’s home and their test scores. This was referenced in Freakonomics and also cause for some sniping regarding correlation versus causality.

The crux of the report was this finding:

• A child with at least 50 kids’ books in his home, for instance, scores roughly 5 percentile points higher than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores another 5 percentile points higher than a child with 50 books.

Yet, there was no correlation between a parent reading to the child and test scores. This led many to believe that books, and the number of books, in the home wasn’t the primary factor, but instead was linked to the parent’s income and education.

I find that a weak argument for a couple of reasons. The first being the difference in scores between 50 books and 100 books. If you believe this argument, then the parents of the 100 book group are richer and better educated than those in the 50 book group. I’d be surprised if this was the case. It would have been a major finding in the report had this been true.

The second reason is that the environment has so much to do with a child’s growth and development. Akin to the Montessori idea of the prepared environment, it makes sense that having books around greatly increases the chance that they’ll seek them out on their own.

Parents reading to their child might not be correlated to success, but having access to books for children to seek out and explore on their own makes sense. You could be rich and intelligent parents, but if you’re feeding your kids a diet of Halo 3 on a daily basis you might get some odd results.

So how am I linking these two reports together? I know, it seems like a stretch, right? Here’s how.

• Most kids say there are not enough really good books for boys/girls their age, and they say finding books they like is one of the key reasons they do not read for fun more frequently.

This important statement comes from The Reading Report, making it clear that finding books is a key to reading. The odds of you finding books is far higher if you’ve got them in your home.

The Reading Report goes on to show the dramatic effect Harry Potter had on reading habits and attitudes. Again, I’d offer up the question: would a child be more or less likely to read Harry Potter if the books were in the home?

Yeah … parents, buy more books.

Speaking at D6, a conference about all things digital, Jeff Bezos told reporter Staci D. Kramer that about his vision for the Kindle.

The vision for Kindle is every book ever in print in any language—all available in less than 60 seconds.

It’s a lofty goal that Bezos says may take “years of work.” Years of work? You’ve got 125,000 titles and you think getting the entire compendium of printed books ever, in any language, is simply going to take years of work? I’m hoping this is just posturing or marketing because it will not be possible to do this in years, if ever!

The current way in which Amazon handles pre-ISBN (International Standard Book Number) titles isn’t very good. Long story short, Amazon doesn’t have good visibility into out-of-print books. Their catalog is often wrong because of the chaos that existed in publishing before ISBNs were introduced.

Kudos to Staci D. Kramer for not drinking the Kool Aid and believing that publishers are eager to contribute titles to Kindle. If this were the case you’d have plenty more titles available already. According to Bowker, the number of titles currently available on Kindle is only a third of the total titles published in 2006.

A third of a single year!

Publishers are wary of the digital age and the entrance of Amazon into this arena. Some may embrace the idea, but I believe most have a gut sense that Amazon must be getting more out of the deal somehow. These are established (some stodgy) companies who are not ready to cede control of the future of books to one player.

Mr. Bezos, my advice is to focus on the renewable and ripe market of textbooks.

Kindle Textbooks could be huge. That’s saying a lot for me since I’m not a big fan of the Kindle. It’s not that the device doesn’t look interesting or perform half-way well. I simply believe reading is active rather than passive and there is no motivating agent of change to adopt a new reading platform. So, I’m not nearly as bullish on future Kindle sales, despite the ’sold out’ buzz and fawning praise from gadgeteers.

Yet, the textbook niche seems ripe for the Kindle. Textbooks are expensive, heavy, frequently updated, largely disposable and reach a demographic eager to adopt new technology.

The US Department of Education (DOE) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) have researched the rising cost of textbooks in the last ten years. Following are a few excerpts from the DOE Koch Report:

Between 1986 and 2004, textbook prices rose 186 percent in the United States, or slightly more than six percent per year (GAO, 2005). Meanwhile, other prices rose only about three percent per year (GAO, 2005).

CALPIRG (2005) found that students at California public universities spent an average of $898 on textbooks in the 2004-2005 academic year. If textbook prices have continued to rise at six percent per year, then this expenditure will rise to $1,009 in the 2006-2007 academic year and constitute 6.1 percent of the estimated annual cost of education for a resident student at a four-year public university (College Board, 2005).

There is a lot of money to be made in textbooks - publishers, college bookstores, used booksellers. In fact, the secondary market in textbooks is perhaps as important to the book vertical as the holiday season. Textbooks provide an ever renewing source of customers who are essentially forced to buy textbooks at high price points.

The Kindle would disrupt this ecosystem which may be why Amazon hasn’t (yet) tapped the textbook potential.

Who would win? Publishers could be persuaded to lower prices for digital distribution based on lower production costs. In addition, if DRM can be attached, the resale capability of textbooks is severely reduced. They likely lock in higher margins, even while reducing the cost of textbooks. The latter means students win and, of course, Amazon wins.

Who loses? Certainly the secondary market for used textbooks. The college bookstores also lose since they’re no longer in the distribution chain, ceding this to Amazon. Folks like Barnes & Noble (who run many college bookstores) and Follett would not be pleased.

Aside from the economic issues, the weight of textbooks has been a growing concern for both parents and educators. Kindle textbooks would solve the weight issue and would certainly appeal to those concerned with the environment.

However, it could potentially expand the disparity in education via the digital divide. Here’s where Kindle contracts with school systems or grants from non-profits could help distribute the Kindle to all economic classes.

Finally, the market is perfect. They’re young, not reading for pleasure and have no real necessity to hang onto a particular textbook. It’s practical and functional. Yet, a certain percentage will begin to view the Kindle as the preferred reading platform and likely use it for more than textbooks. Amazon could actually create the market I currently don’t see through wide adoption of Kindle textbooks.

The Kindle already provides some features that would benefit students:

… you can add annotations to text, just like you might write in the margins of a book. And because it is digital, you can edit, delete, and export your notes, highlight and clip key passages, and bookmark pages for future use.

There’s already a drum beat of folks advocating for Kindle textbooks, including here, here and even on Amazon. Me? I still don’t have one and don’t really want one either.

I still think wide Kindle adoption is a long-shot but the odds would get better if Amazon launched a highly focused Kindle textbook initiative.

Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney predicts that Amazon will generate between $400 million and $750 million in Kindle revenue by 2010 based on a to-date Kindle sales estimate of between 10,000 and 30,000. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington does a nice job taking the Mahaney report and extracting the relevant points. In particular, the issue is the slim amount of public data on the Kindle. The $64,000 question … er … $400 million dollar question is just how many Kindles have been sold.

Here’s how Mahaney arrives at the 10,000 to 30,000 range.

How Is Kindle Doing So Far In The Marketplace?

Our ability to answer this question is very limited. Amazon is the sole retailer of the Kindle and it has disclosed no information about its sales other than to say that it sold out in the first 5 1⁄2 hours. But we have pieced together four different clues to gain a sense of Kindle’s traction.

First, we note that Kindle has consistently been ranked among Amazon’s Bestsellers in its Electronics category. Ahead of the Apple iPod Nano, the Garmin GPS Navigator, and the Canon Powershot Digital Camera.

Second, we note that the Kindle has received a very large number of customer reviews. Per the exhibit below, we note that Kindle has received more customer reviews than any of the other Top 10 Bestselling items in Amazon’s Electronics category – 2,537 reviews as of May 12th – vs. 663 for the Apple iPod Nano 4 GB Silver (3G), the #2 Bestseller. This is in part an unfair comparison. Kindle is a new product sold only on Amazon.com, while there are numerous versions of the iPod, and they are sold by numerous retailers. But still, the volume of reviews does indicate material traction for the Kindle.

Third, we see that the quality/tone of the customer reviews the Kindle is receiving is relatively positive. Below we compare the Star Rating Diffusion – 5 Stars vs. 4 Stars vs. 3 Stars etc… – for each of the Top 10 Bestselling Electronics Items on Amazon. What we see is that the Kindle actually receives fewer high scores than the other Bestsellers – 69% of its reviews are 4 or 5 Stars vs. an average of 80% for the other items. And it receives more low scores than the other Bestsellers – 22% of its reviews are 1 or 2 Stars vs. an average of 13% for the other Items. But for a Version 1 of a product “competing” against a several times iterated leading consumer electronics item like the iPod, a 69% Star 4 or 5 rating is relatively positive.

And fourth, we note that the most reviewed Customer Review of Kindle (“Why and how the Kindle changes everything” by Steve “eBook Lover” Gibson) has been reviewed by at least 27,000 people. Specifically, as of May 13th, 26,931 have read Steve Gibson’s review and actually commented on it by pressing the Yes or No button when asked if the review was helpful. And logically, there would be more people who read the review and didn’t bother to vote, although the voting step is hyper-easy. We believe that this helps provide something of a proxy for how many Kindles have likely been sold. We’d peg the number as somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Kindles sold to date.

I’m glad Mahaney speaks to the fact that the Kindle is only sold at Amazon which would boost it’s standing for both bestsellers and customer reviews. However, using the review rating number as a proxy for Kindle sales seems shaky. It is hyper-easy and there’s a lot of vitriol around Amazon, eBooks, DRM that could encourage this type of ‘monkey click’ behavior. I’m not saying Mahaney is wrong because he’s very smart and is most often correct. I just don’t think this is as much an indicator given the buzz and inherent troll behavior on the Internet.

The model Mahaney uses is based on the iPod adoption curve, but using a smaller base and discounted substantially. Clearly, any type of adoption even half as successful as the iPod would be a massive success. The problem (for me) is that I view the iPod and Kindle as very different, and am concerned that the initial rush of sales was far more indicative of a gadget obsessed innovator segment and not representative of how it would translate to the other stages of the innovation adoption curve.

You can read the details of my argument against large Kindle adoption, but in general I simply don’t think reading has nearly as large a market as music; reading is active rather than passive; the portability issue isn’t nearly as troublesome; and the reading market is, in general, less inclined to adopt these new technologies based on an aging demographic.

The one place I can see large adoption would be within the textbook market. Not only would Kindle Textbooks be a boon to Amazon and students, it would groom a whole new generation on the medium in which they read books.