US: University presses start to sell via Kindle

The Subprime Solution: How today's global financial crisis happened, and what to do about it is a promising title for Princeton University Press, writes Inside Higher Ed. The topic couldn't be more timely and the author is Robert Shiller, a Yale University economist who has managed with works such as Irrational Exuberance to attract big audiences for complicated topics. Princeton press is planning something new for the release: two weeks before print publication the book will be available as a Kindle e-book. Kindle is Amazon.com's portable reader that allows for downloading of complete books and its Amazon.com market is attractive to many publishers - including university pressses.

By the beginning of the fall, Princeton plans to have several hundred books available for sale through Kindle. Yale University Press and Oxford University Press already have a similar presence there. The University of California Press recently had about 40 of its volumes placed on Kindle and is ramping up. Press officials say that they are generally putting a wide selection of current and backlist volumes on Kindle, and are not selecting any one particular kind of volume as more likely to sell in this format.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site