McGraw-Hill to expand higher-ed content on the Kindle

Reuters carries a PrNewswire on McGraw-Hill Education's announcement today of the expansion of its strategic alliance with Amazon, to introduce the publisher's higher education content on Kindle and Kindle DX.

I see that Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, stresses the increase in the "reach of its digital content through the Kindle DX" while Laura Porco, director of Kindle books mentions "working with McGraw-Hill to expand the selection of content available on Kindle and Kindle DX."
  Per the Reuters PRNewswire:

" In addition to the over 3,000 professional business, medical and technical titles currently available for Kindle and Kindle DX, McGraw-Hill will now be offering over 100 top selling higher education titles in business, economics, science, math, humanities, foreign languages, and social sciences. "

This is definitely good news as it's been noted that the 6 universities involved in the coming Fall session study using the Kindle DX technology (to save paper and student backs if it works well) will include offerings from Pearson Education, Cengage Learning and Wiley Higher Education.  The study's participant schools are Pace, Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Reed College and the University of Virginia.  There have been questions on the Kindle forums about whether McGraw-Hill textbooks would be offered.

  The focus of colleges and universities, the newswire says, is on achieving improved student retention and pass rates while lowering the overall cost of instruction. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
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How to save on college textbooks

An AP article carried by Cleveland Ohio Business News suggests "3 ways to save on college textbooks"

The article points out that publishers are now offering to rent books or are providing electronic versions at what AP says is a fraction of the cost and that, next summer, colleges will be required by federal law to "list the cost of required materials in online course schedules.  Publishers will also need to disclose book prices in marketing sent to professors who may not realize the costs"

Until then they suggest
1. Renting.  They give Chegg.com as an example - that site is renting Introductory Chemistry for a semester for $44 while the list price of the book is $140.  They have a catalog of 1.6 million titles and say they will try to track down books requested that are not in the catalog.  While the student pays for shipping, returns at the end of the semester are done with prepaid envelopes.
  BookRenter.com works similarly and there is an option to buy at the end of the rental period, with credit for the rental price.  Both places offer refunds if a class is dropped - within 30 days at Chegg.com and within 10 at BookRenter.

2. Buying Used.  The AP article states that used books cost almost as much as new ones, at campus bookstores, so they recommend going online to Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Borders for better pricing, where the condition of a book is often described by the 3rd-party sellers (rated by users) and online coupons or special sales are offered in email by the bookstore chains.

3. Digital books.  Coursesmart.com offers about 7,000 titles and the company says that its e-textbooks are, on average, half the price of new print copies, and have the same layout so there's no confusion over what 'pages' are assigned.  Print copies are available too.  There is rather limited copy & paste allowed but students can print 10 copies "at a time" (whatever "a time" means).  Highlighting is also a feature.
  Cengage Learning makes its titles available electronically at iChapters.com.  Unlike e-books bought for the Kindle or Sony readers, the books at both companies can be kept for only the equivalent of a semester and can't be used later for referencing.  These are not bought but leased then.

 The Kindle DX and Sony Reader are also mentioned, but it's pointed out that some textbooks won't be available for them.  They add:

" Three textbook publishers -- Pearson PLC, Cengage Learning and John Wiley & Sons Inc. -- have agreed to make books available on the Kindle. But representatives for Kindle and Sony did not respond to questions about the breadth of their textbook selections or prices.

As an example, however, "An Introduction to the Standard Model of Particle Physics" cost $45.45 on the Kindle, compared to $75.11 for a new copy from third-party vendors. "

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle

(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!