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[guitarcries]

Arnold Schwartznegger to Scrap Textbooks for E-Books

This totally reads like an Onion article. Especially: "Holding up four large books he joked: 'I can use these for the curls,' in a nod to his bodybuilding days before he became one of Hollywood's biggest stars."

Comments

[misc_negro]

This is really cool
It makes me think of all the ways you can do some good things/marketing/price dropping for it.

So if say Amazon or the people making the Crunchpad were to get in on it and make a rugged kindle like book it could work.

Make them where they are very properitary so there is no market for them outside of school, like only hold 1 book at a time and put serious seals on the hardware so its hard to hack it, hard, not impossible. Make them bluetooth tethered so they can only have the book "loaded" when next to a beacon that will be in the classroom and at the students house. It will require that constant connection to keep the book "loaded". Once out of range it bricks and is just a screen saver unless you plug it in to charge. Then you have a book that is a brick unless you are in certain sanctioned places and even then only have very limited capacity. You can make places like the library or bookstores other "santctioned" places for study as well
if you make it very proprietary it can be cheaper when nobody can find another easy use for it. You would need a beacon that holds the book information. Make this like a 90 buck router that holds the books or has a network connection to a server that has the books. Im seeing 90 bucks for a book-beacon and under 100 for the e-book if done right. Sell advertising for the screen saver to companies that parents of school, districts vote on during PTA meetings. "We don't want Phillip Morris advertising on our books" Then vote them out.

[guitarcries]

Hehe, interesting ideas. I hadn't thought about it too much. I would figure it would be cheaper for them in the long run, but maybe not immediately.

[misc_negro]

yeah, i think it would be hard to get a manufacturer to not really jack that price up. Thats why I thought about advertising. BUT im not the person to make those decisions and this is also why I dont work in government. I would want to just kick people until they understood me.

[guitarcries]

I can understand the impulse.

I dunno if advertising would work. People would balk at that idea... you never see ads in regular textbooks.

[misc_negro]

I think they would be more upset at the price of the e-book though at first.

Here in Texas we have some school districts that advertise on the sides of school busses. For years Coke and Pepsi had machines in schools. So I don't think its "too" bad and if people were to get involved with a list of approved advertisements from companies that make good foods, tutoring centers, places to buy sporting goods, graduation supplies, colleges, car dealerships and such then the price could "theoretically" come way down.

Im thinking way too much about this and I don't have any kids and my dog can't stop eating his butt when I tell him to. So I am way ahead of the game here lol.

[guitarcries]

Hmm... ads on schoolbuses, huh? I guess perhaps it could work. Who knows... when I think people will get upset, they don't. When I think that no one could possibly get upset about something, they do.