Perhaps you’re accustomed to downloading free lectures and courses on iTunes U. Now, you have a new option. Last week, Apple began introducing free eBooks to its media collection. And, to kick things off, they’re giving users access to 18 free textbooks sponsored by Connexions (a Rice University project); a series of 100 ebooks produced by the Open University, and then, courtesy of Oxford University, the complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays from the First Folio of 1623. You can download all of these texts in the open ePub format. And if you have an iPad (or an iPhone with a copy of iBooks), they easily sync to the device, and make for a great reading experience. But you’re not necessarily limited to using the iPad. I was able to read the texts in ebook readers created by Stanza and Barnes & Noble (the maker of the new color Nook). And, using this free online service and then following these general directions, I easily converted the ePub files to Amazon’s .mobi format and uploaded them to my Kindle. The bottom line? You can expect iTunes U to become a handy resource for free ebooks as the service matures – one best suited to the iPad, but certainly not limited to it. And, speaking of the iPad, you should give this story a read. “IPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy.” It’s a great way to start the week…
Note: If you want a simple html version of Shakespeare’s collected works, don’t miss MIT’s invaluable web site.
The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Vol. 1) hit the stands just yesterday, and already it stands atop the Amazon bestseller list, leapfrogging past Stieg Larsson, Bill Bryson, Jon Stewart, and even the latest, supposedly greatest American novelist, Jonathan Franzen. Although he died a century again, Twain has still got it.
The 766 page autobiography published by UC Press runs $18.99 in hardcover on Amazon, and the Kindle version a far cooler $9.99. You can read excerpts in PDF format here and here. Meanwhile you can also find free versions of Twain’s classics – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer – in our collections of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.
This new and growing collection pulls together an assortment of free textbooks available online. The list is mostly slanted toward science and math (that’s what is out there), and the texts are almost entirely written by college professors or qualified high school teachers. In some instances, these texts were originally published in book format, and now the authors have decided to publish them online. In other cases, authors joining the “open textbook” movement (see Flat World Knowledge, CK-12, Curriki, etc.) have published their works for the first time in electronic format, often under a Creative Commons license. We will update the list continually. But if you see good texts missing, please feel free to ping us. You can access 100+ Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection here, and please forward the link to any young students or lifelong learners who might benefit…
P.S. This collection will always appear in the top navigation of the web site. Just look for “Textbooks” in the top nav bar.
A quick fyi for any college student looking to save some money on textbooks this year. Last week, The New York Times published a helpful guide to lowering textbook costs. The comprehensive list tells you where you can find free ebooks and cheap electronic textbooks online, while highlighting e‑commerce vendors that rent traditional textbooks at a reduced cost. (Take Chegg for example.) In total, the guide lists 20 different resources. If you’re heading to college soon, it’s well worth a look.
Amazon ran a not so successful etextbook experiment at Princeton this year. Now it’s time for the iPad to take a crack at the digital textbook market. Wasting little time, CourseSmart has announced an iPad app that will bring thousands of textbooks to Apple’s new platform. The video above gives you a glimpse into this initiative. And while you can only tell so much from a short video, it looks like this product could have some legs. The interface looks pretty slick, and the product quite usable. The downside is that CourseSmart doesn’t do enough to lower costs for students. Generally, the company rents digital textbooks for 50% of the price that Amazon sells hard copies. That leaves students still paying inflated prices. And so the video above hardly constitutes an endorsement. It’s more to show you where the market is going.
Yesterday morning, I headed to the Palo Alto Apple Store, spent an hour waiting in line, then finally gained entrance to the store. And who entered alongside me? Steve Jobs! An auspicious beginning. I left with a 32 gig iPad, took it home, and started playing particularly with the eBook reader. Here are my very early impressions:
15 months ago, I bought a Kindle and returned it. I just couldn’t read with it at night (a non-starter for me), and figured that Apple would eventually get it right. Well, they largely have. The iPad initially feels a little heavy. But, it’s actually no heavier than your average hardback book. Plus it’s fairly easy to hold. Score one for the iPad.
Then, when you fire up the eBook reader, you instantly like what you see. The fonts are crisp, and the images are in color, which means that you can read children’s books, comics and other graphic intensive texts. Plus, you can change the size and kind of the font. You can adjust the brightness of the screen. And, in some cases, you can even alter the background color of the screen. (Most of this you can’t do with the Kindle.) All of this contributes to a reader-friendly screen that’s easy on the eyes. And, yes, I can read with this device at night. (Readers make other good observations in the comments below.)
How about buying books for the iPad? Well, it’s pretty easy. Both Apple and Amazon sell books for the device, with prices generally ranging between $9.99 and $12.99. Rather notably, they also offer access to a sizable collection of free books in the public domain. (You can get more freebies here, too.) Overall, Amazon has a much larger inventory, and their books tend to be cheaper. But otherwise these are pretty similar services. And, because Apple now has a far superior device, you have to wonder whether this is the beginning of a big shift in the book market. In five years, Amazon might not be quite the behemoth it is today — something that’s probably letting Steve Jobs sleep easier than Jeff Bezos at night.
A final point worth mentioning here: Neither company will let you have true ownership over the books you buy. Both vendors lock down their books, dictate the operating environments in which you can read them, and control the user interfaces that shape the reading experience. (PC World has more on that here.) You don’t have much ultimate control over the underlying file. So the upshot is that you had better like the iPad (or Kindle) reading experience before deciding to amass a large and costly library.
Now for a few random observations:
1) The video generally looks great (unless, of course, it’s produced in Flash). I was really impressed with the quality of YouTube videos, and Netflix movies (free app here) stream over the iPad rather brilliantly.
2) On the downside, I found typing on the iPad to be rather difficult — even more so than typing on an iPhone. The device is large enough that it’s hard to stretch your fingers to reach various keys. Maybe I will get a hang of it. But, for now, it’s unwieldy.
3) The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have developed new apps for the iPad, and they deliver a pleasant reading experience, to be sure. But I don’t see this suddenly making consumers any more (or less) willing to pay. The concept of the iPad saving the newspaper industry seems fairly overplayed, I’m sorry to say.
4) Is this a must-have device? Or just nice-to-have? Right now, I’m inclined toward the latter (and so is Slate). Aside from the eBook reader, your home computer or smart phone can accomplish most of what the iPad can. However, the iPad will rapidly differentiate itself. It will become a nice low-cost, portable computer — one that lets you store data in the cloud, and provides access to a large volume of cheap or free software (at least more than your average consumer normally gets). Give it a year. Wait for the flood of apps to come. Wait for innovative software developers to extract the potential of this machine, and wait for Apple to make the iPad lighter, cheaper, and even faster. Right now, it’s not a game changer. But it will be down the line.
Are you a new iPad owner? Have any thoughts in general? Or particularly about the eBook reader? Add them to the comments below, or send them our way. We look forward to hearing what you have to say …
A quick fyi: Amazon has released an app that will let you read Kindle texts on your Mac (finally!) and the upcoming iPad. If you’re looking for free Kindle texts, we’ve produced a long list here, including many great classics. You can find Kindle apps (all free) for other devices below.
Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon’s large e‑book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far less paper. (Paper consumption was generally reduced by 54%.) On the downside, students complained that the Kindle was fundamentally “ill-suited for class readings.” As one student put it:
I expected it to be a really useful tool that would enhance my experience, but it has hindered my studies in a lot of different ways… I wasn’t able to absorb the material as well as if I had hard copies of the readings, and I had to deal with a lot of technical inconveniences just from the design of the Kindle.
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Perhaps you’re accustomed to downloading free lectures and courses on iTunes U. Now, you have a new option. Last week, Apple began introducing free eBooks to its media collection. And, to kick things off, they’re giving users access to 18 free textbooks sponsored by Connexions (a Rice University project); a series of 100 ebooks produced by the Open University, and then, courtesy of Oxford University, the complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays from the First Folio of 1623. You can download all of these texts in the open ePub format. And if you have an iPad (or an iPhone with a copy of iBooks), they easily sync to the device, and make for a great reading experience. But you’re not necessarily limited to using the iPad. I was able to read the texts in ebook readers created by Stanza and Barnes & Noble (the maker of the new color Nook). And, using this free online service and then following these general directions, I easily converted the ePub files to Amazon’s .mobi format and uploaded them to my Kindle. The bottom line? You can expect iTunes U to become a handy resource for free ebooks as the service matures – one best suited to the iPad, but certainly not limited to it. And, speaking of the iPad, you should give this story a read. “IPad Opens World to a Disabled Boy.” It’s a great way to start the week…
