My only exposure to audio books has been with the purchase of a small starter collection of Playaways for my school. The students who have checked them out have been very enthusiastic and I'll be buying more in the future, even though they are quite expensive. I like them because it can be used without any other equipment, but can also be plugged into a boombox for classroom use.
I haven't ventured into the realm of eBooks for my library, even though they are available from various vendors. And I certainly couldn't advertise free downloads since teachers and students are prohibited from downloading anything to school computers and would have to do so elsewhere.
I own a Palm E2 that I use for inventory and it also has the capability of downloading eBooks, but I seldom use it as such. I prefer to read on a larger screen than 3"x 4" ! Has anyone seen or used the new Kindle ? I'm curious to see if that will take off better than the older eBook readers.
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I've seen lots of discussions on listservs about the Playaways. I'm tempted to try them but the price did seem quite high. Do any of the vendors give discounts on these? What would you do if a child lost or damaged one? Would you charge that price?
I bought my collection from Follett last year and they don't give any discount other than free shipping. I see that Recorded Books has Playaways, but I've never bought anything from them before. There might be a discount if the purchase is over a certain amount.
I rarely charge the full replacement cost for anything that is lost or damaged, so I'd probably charge less than the purchase price and take the loss. My rationalization is that many books mysteriously disappear each year anyway, so this would be just one more! I also have a difficult time getting students to pay for books - sometimes the school allows them to withdraw before checking with me :(
It's unfortunate that you can't download anything to school computers. We offer some excellent children's Ebooks that would be fun for kids because you could project the book from your computer to a large screen and the kids would see the pages "turn" as you read. Is this particular to your district, or something that's pretty much universal? I ask because I've given thought to offering to compile anthologies of student works that schools could use as both a student motivator and a revenue source.
Regards,
Annie Williams
http://www.FrugalFiction.com
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