In the prior post, we wrote “With products like the Amazon Kindle now commercially viable, it’s questionable whether students will be using ‘hard copy’ textbooks at all five years from now. Given the expense of printing, the short time horizon of use, and, frankly, the sheer weight of most textbooks that college kids have to lug around, moving all college texts to digital editions makes a lot more sense over the long run.”

Today in the Wall Street Journal, we see that the long-term may be coming even sooner than we thought: “Amazon’s Kindle to Sell Law Books.”

This is only the beginning, of course.  But consider the potential: practicing lawyers and law students alike can now potentially kiss the late nights at the law library goodbye.  They could instead carry the entire thing with them in their briefcase.  The ease of indexing, bookmarking, and flipping back and forth between text and footnotes make it all the more compelling.And why stop at law books?  Surely doctors and CPAs could benefit from having their medical reference books and tax volumes  on the Kindle.

At any rate, change is coming, and it’s coming even faster than we thought!

Charles Sizemore, CFA

Co-author of the recently-published Boom or Bust: Understanding and Profiting from a Changing Consumer Economy

One benefit of living through a deep recession is that the hard times have a way of spurring innovation.  A rising tide lifts all boats, but the opposite can be said of a falling tide.   During recessions, inefficient businesses and business models either evolve or die.The few exceptions tend to be in “recession-proof” industries like higher education.  But, as we’ve discussed in prior posts, this recession has had a way of rattling industries that have never before been rattled.  

One of these is the sleepy market for college textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »