Elizabethtown junior Travis Beeler bought an Amazon Kindle this semester so he wouldn’t have to carry around as many books.

Kindles are digital book readers available exclusively through Amazon, according to Amazon.com.

Amazon announced the Kindle DX yesterday, according to an Amazon press release. With the new Kindle, textbooks from publishers such as Cengage Learning, Pearson and Wiley will be available.

Beeler, who has an earlier edition of the Kindle, said he’s a English major so he sometimes has 20 books at a time for his classes.

“It’s really handy to have around,” he said.

Beeler said he can highlight and take notes on books on his Kindle.

The Kindle DX, available this summer, has a 9.7-inch display, an Adobe PDF reader and storage for about 3,500 books, according to the press release.

It’ll cost $489, according to Amazon.com. The current version has a six-inch display screen and costs $359.

According to the release, the Kindle’s display screen isn’t backlit and resembles a book page, so it doesn’t strain the readers’ eyes.

Kindle users access books and Internet through a free wireless connection from Amazon, according to the release. They don’t need another computer or Internet access to download books.

Academic Technology Director John Bowers said Kindles don’t use the campus wireless network, so officials don’t know how many people use them at Western.

Forrest Halford, bookstore department manager at Western’s bookstore, said the Kindle would affect the bookstore.

“The bottom line is – anything that isn’t sold by us will affect us,” he said.

The bookstore sells pass codes for electronic books, which can be read on computers and other digital readers, Halford said.

Best Buy sells a Sony Reader Digital Book for about $349, according to Best Buy’s Web site.

Halford said he thinks some students will buy Kindles. But he doesn’t think Kindles are lasting technology because new technologies come out that make older versions obsolete.

He said, for example, that the first editions of the iPod aren’t still used because of newer versions.

But the same version of a book can be used for years, Halford said.

According to Amazon.com, most Kindle books cost about $10. Textbook prices vary from about $5 to about $300.

Kindle downloads can only be used on Kindles, Kindle DXs and Kindle for iPhones, according to the press release.

More than 275,000 books are available along with some magazines and newspapers, according to the press release.