So, the first full week of school is coming to a close, and I've finally purchased all my textbooks.

I came up just shy of $400, and I'm a little upset about it. I always manage between $150 and $300 each semester, and suddenly I'm paying 400 bucks?

I blame the special editions. Two of my seven books were over $100 each. One was a seventh edition that has only been released to college bookstores (looks like Amazon gets it mid-semester), so I couldn't get it online at a reasonable price. The other was a special edition with samples of previous work by students, bundled with InSite (which is another rant for another day), and only available at our local stores. When they rang up alone together for $270 I could not believe it. Both, of course, are required for my courses.

For the sake of simplicity, let's round my total bill to $400. I spent $270 on two books. That means I got five books at reasonable prices. The two bestsellers were under $20, and the others were texts between $30 and $40. Granted, they are computer science texts, and I've noticed they can be a little cheaper than other subjects' texts. Computer books is a highly competitive market.

But that begs the question, why don't other subjects have competition that brings the prices down? I'm no economist (though sometimes I pretend to be one through my honors classes), but I really want to know why a book about The Theory of Computation costs one-fourth that of Business Writing. AND I want to know what that's only true online--the local bookstores wanted $75 for my $35 Theory book. Wikipedia starts to answer these questions, but I'm begging any readers out there for more detail. When I saw the cost of my required special edition business writing textbook, I seriously considered dropping the class and Googling the subject instead. I might yet if I hadn't already broken the plastic that bound InSite to it (that plastic is another rant that I don't even want to start).

Anyway, all this book research has led me to really appreciate what Amazon is trying to do with Kindle. I wish I could have spent this semester's $400 on that instead. Some of you might have noticed the attempt that eBook made a few years ago to put electronic texts in the hands of the average Joe. I hope the Kindle goes over better. I really do.

I think it will happen if college professors catch on. A $400 investment in the Kindle gets you access to instant downloads of any available text with its free built-in WiFi connection. And they work with the publishers to bring the prices wwwaaaaayyy down. I saw some college texts available for $10 and $15 for the Kindle. Plus, you can do some PDA things on Kindle, like take notes. The experience of your average lecture class could feasibly be paperless.Think about that. That is sweet.

I'm not one for gadgets (e.g. my no-texting, no-camera cell phone is over two years old). It was a big step for me to ask for a Nintendo DS for my birthday last fall. But the moment I go to class and my professor chooses a book available on Kindle, I'm getting one. It might not happen before I get my degree here, I'll grant you that, but I currently plan on another six years of school.

I want to see the Kindle do well. And so should every college student.