Amazon.com has been pushing its new Kindle DX with the academic crowd, trying to get universities and students to embrace it as a digital textbook reader. As part of the effort, Amazon has been lining up the major textbook publishers to ensure their titles make it onto the Kindle (last week scoring one of the last major holdouts, McGraw-Hill Education). Now a company called CourseSmart, founded by many of those same publishers, is making some 7,000 textbooks available on Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. The new offering is a sign that the textbook industry is hedging its bets as it prepares for the digital future.

The new CourseSmart application for iPhone, which launched today, offers more than 7,000 electronic textbook titles from 12 publishers. Students can buy access to e-textbooks for a set period of time (the average is about 180 days), and save an average of $58 on individual titles, according to the company. CourseSmart was founded in 2007 by a group of college textbook publishers, including Pearson, Cengage Learning, Wiley, and McGraw-Hill Education -- all of which are making some titles available on the Kindle.

While it's hard to imagine doing a lot of in-depth studying on the iPhone, I can see students reading a chapter or two at at time on their iPhone if they're on the go, or using the iPhone to search for key words in a digital text. CourseSmart gives students a way to access their e-textbooks on any internet-connected computer as well.

Amazon is testing the Kindle DX with students in pilot projects at a handful of universities, and has its own Kindle app for iPhone. It will be interesting to see if students embrace digital textbooks -- and if so, which devices they'll prefer to do their reading.

Here's a demo of the iPhone app from CourseSmart:

Update: Frank Lyman, an executive vice president with San Mateo, Calif.-based CourseSmart, said in a phone interview that the company hasn't had any conversations with Amazon about digital textbooks. But he said Amazon's launch of Kindle DX in May boosted the visibility of e-textbooks generally, which is helping CourseSmart.

"Since that (Kindle DX) announcement, there's a lot more interest among faculty, students and administrators, and that's good for everybody," Lyman said.

Asked about merits of reading textbooks on the small iPhone screen versus the larger Kindle DX display, Lyman said the iPhone has a "unique utility" for students.

"It's another access point. Maybe they already read it on their computer, and they can go back and find an illustration that helps them with a difficult concept, and zoom in and out," he said.

Lyman said the major textbook publishers behind CourseSmart -- who are also working with Kindle -- are watching how the e-textbook market develops.

"They'll do what the market suggests is a smart thing to do," he said. "If students are interested in having textbooks on a computer or anywhere else, the publishers want to support that."

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