A larger Kindle could upend textbooks, periodicals

NEW YORK -- Amazon.com is widely expected to unveil a new Kindle electronic book device with a larger screen Wednesday, which would be geared for textbooks, magazines and newspapers and possibly shake up the economics of multiple industries at once.

The Seattle-based online retailer is not giving details about what it will announce at its press event at Pace University in New York, but the company has not disputed widespread reports that a larger Kindle is on tap. The most recent version of the Kindle was announced at New York's Morgan Library & Museum in February.

That Kindle, which costs $359 and can wirelessly download books to be read on its grayscale screen, already includes several features that could aid textbook reading, like the ability to highlight and bookmark passages. Users can tap the Kindle's typewriter-layout keyboard to look up words and annotate text.

Newspaper and magazine lovers can also buy subscriptions to publications that are wirelessly delivered to the device, too.

But the current device's screen, 6 inches on the diagonal, is more suited to paperback books than larger reading material.

If Amazon reveals a bigger device better suited for digital textbooks and periodicals, the rollout could help students get educational materials more cheaply and give newspapers and magazines a better way to sell digital versions of their content.

So far the Kindle's digital delivery method has meant lower prices for its content. New releases of books are typically $10. Newsweek is $1.49 per month via Kindle, about half of what a subscription to the print edition sells for on Newsweek's website.

As any college student knows, textbooks are notoriously costly. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report put the average cost of textbooks at $900 per year for students at four-year public colleges. (The textbook industry noted that the figure includes supplies, and estimated that books alone cost about $625 per year.)

Textbook publishers say they must charge such prices because the books are expensive to produce and often have only one year of sales to recoup their investment. After the first year, students tend to buy used books, cutting out revenue for the publishers.