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Amazon Lets Students Rent Digital Textbooks
nk497 writes "Amazon has unveiled a new digital textbook rental service, allowing students to choose how long they'd like access to an eBook-version of a textbook via their Kindle or app — with the retailer claiming savings as high as 80%. Kindle Textbook Rental will let students use a text for between 30 and 360 days, adding extra days as they need to. Any notes or highlighted text will be saved via the Amazon Cloud for students to reference after the book is 'returned.' Amazon said tens of thousands of books would be available to rent for the next school year."
I routinely find myself referencing textbooks from courses that I took years ago. If students cannot afford their books, university libraries should provide copies; students should not be at the mercy of Amazon or any other company.
Palm trees and 8
Because all of us remember everything from our classes and never again need a reference Complete silliness. Find more ways for them to keep the books, not more ways to take them away.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
There are some books that I would prefer to keep around for reference (In the engineering course path) and in that case, I would not want to rely on Amazon for this. The most useful case would be for the books for my Gen-Ed classes like English and Economics where I need the book for max 2-3 terms (~24-36 weeks) and I'll never need the book again. Also, a great plus is that when I'm done with the books for these Gen-Ed courses, They are absolutely worthless and end up being thrown away. These are fair sized books most often. I would much rather rent these books than lug them around. Given that they are searchable and can all fit on my nice small kindle, I would probably do more homework too. :-P
From Amazon's example:
Hardcover (Amazon): $184.99
Hardcover (New): $90
Hardcover (Used): $55
Kindle Edition: $109.20
Not good idea. You can go to library and save money.
Ideally classes should use open source materials (or is that open source source materials? open source^2 materials?) but if they're going to have the whole corrupt commercial textbook system then students ought to have the option to rent rather than buying anything they're not going to keep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because those corporate whores are the ones who publish the books that hold the information.
If you really want to support the freedom of information, petition your university to use OpenCourseWare.
If you ever look closely at Amazon's manufacturer's suggested retail price, you'll find that many times it's much more than what the manufacturer says it is. 80% of what they say is the normal price.
It's like when you see those ads on TV that say "HOLIDAY SPECIAL! 60% OR MORE OFF!" and then when you actually go to the sale, you'll see that their "sale" is the same price as other stores.
next up kids, I'll show you how to "prove" that a bolt from Home Depot "costs" $500 when you're selling it cost plus to the Department of Defense - and it'll all be FASB safe!
You usually can make a reasonably good guess as to which books will most certainly not be useful later on in your career (which in my experience I guessed pretty accurately, and the numbers were pretty high - social sciences and English anyone?). I would much rather deal with the likes of Amazon over the exorbitant book pricing and buy-back policies of university bookstores.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
I have a hard time believing that anyone references more than 10% of their undergrad texts after graduation.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
The textbook publishers are going to throw a FIT. So are the universities, probably, because most of them run for-profit bookstores.
I expect that Amazon is going to be forced to kill this new service within a few months.
The way textbooks are bought and sold and approved is one of the biggest scams in education. But it's hugely profitable. Amazon is going to have a battle on their hands.
Most libraries have maximum loan times of 3 weeks and then you have to bring them back. Sometimes they let you (automatically) renew the book, but if somebody has it reserved, you often don't have that option. Libraries would not give you the option of keeping a text book for the entire semester.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Richard Stallman's famous parable about the Right to Read, and what will happen if intellectual monopoly laws continue to grow.
It's amazing how RMS, obstinate as he is, has been so prescient.
The story's about what will happen when we're all converted to electronic books.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
If, however, they don't off students at least an option to choose whether or not they want to keep the content permanently (and, reasonably have to pay more for the privilege than simply renting it), then I have to say I'd be against this sort of thing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You do realize that we're talking about college textbooks here, right? The library isn't going to store 100+ copies of the same book for everyone to use. And a lot of the time, you can't simply check out a coursebook for an entire semester - it's seen as unfair to other students (and people who aren't taking the course but may need to use the book). Amazon seems to have adopted a pretty reasonable solution, as many schools already have textbook rental programs of their own. Now, you can rent the book in digital format, which is going to be very convenient for obvious reasons.
When you're a dirt-poor college student and your books cost as much as $300, renting might be way better than doing things like giving up food. The problem, however, is that the upper-division typical college textbook still isn't available electronically. The general ed stuff -- history, government, English, calculus -- possibly. But the $300 book on igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrography? Not so much. For those of us in the later phases of our college educations, where books get really expensive really fast, this is of limited usefulness.
I'd buy a Kindle if the books I need are available on it. They aren't.
... an unfortunate business model for the 21st century and all our tools of abundance... http://www.artificialscarcity.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
All the negative comments seem to focus on the lack of future reference back to the text after the rental is over. Just like renting Robocop for the 20th time from Blockbuster, there is no reason that you can't re-rent the book for the minimum 30 days again in the future. Or, better yet, you rent the most current edition of the subject textbook and reference up-to-date and now-relevant information instead of what was taught 15 years, 20 discoveries, and 150 theories ago...
Everyone's talking about college books, which are expensive.
What about high school texts? Sure, the books are (loaned) free, but are often in bad shape.
More importantly, my 10th grader humps over 20 pounds of books back and forth to school, every day.
Replacing those heavy tomes with an e-reader would be worth more than a little money, from my point of view. I was seriously considering scanning her texts this fall, but this would be a lot easier.
pt
If we pay some smart people for some good books and take care of distribution our selves we would be much cheaper off en with a lot less restrictions. The knowledge is much more valuable if it is shared across as much people as possible. The digital information store seems too big a choke point if large scale distribution of information at low cost is so easily in reach. We need to break this last barrier.
And as our laws are based in spirit of Christian values I would like too reference Jesus feeding the 5000. The core principle I understand from this is that if you share the end result is a multiplication of what you put in. So to me we are all breaking the law in spirit with a lot of things we are doing, including this Amazon thing. We should freely share a all be ritcher people.
We're extending our Whispersync technology so that you get to keep and access all of your notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, available anytime, anywhere – even after a rental expires.
Then immediately after.
If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.
Well, which is it? These seem to be mutually exclusive conditions. Either you can access your notes "anytime, anywhere" when your rental has expired or you can only access them after you have given them more money again.
You sound like a college professor, who has a hard time believing your area of study isn't interesting to all your students.
For most college classes text books are an expensive and near useless expense, Especially for those Undergrad required courses that the student needs the book for the class then never uses it again... Some students never even use the book during class as they learn better by hearing the lectures vs. from reading a book.
Many college books are introduction based books so after they take the class and advanced to the next ones the content of the intro book is so basic that it is useless now.
Sure some books a student should keep but not all of them. And if you are going to Pay $150.00 for a text book where during the class you have read 3 chapters in it. (50 pages) on a topic that you are not interested in but needed to take the class to graduate. Then have a choice of selling that book back for $15.00 or just being able to rent the book for even $50.00 for the semester you may be better off.
In a classroom of 100 students (who will pass the class). 1 or 2 is so interested in the topic that they will love the book and read it front to back and keep it for it has enlighten so. 20 will read the requested readings and have useful notes on it, 20 will have done the requested reading, 40 will do the required readings just because it will be on the test, and rest will pick out info they need for the test and bluff the rest.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And if it is actually around 80% cheaper then buying new then that is better then buying used and reselling.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
My wife went to the University of Wisconsin Eau Clair and they rented text books there. I would assume that there are other universities that do the same as well. There was also the option to purchase the book if you wanted it.
As many have noted I did keep some of my text books, but they were mostly the more advanced ones like the ones for my compilers, algorithms, computer simulation (offered through the physics department), AI, and robotics courses. Granted these were mostly theory books and had lots of algorithms for doing things and didn't focus much on specific languages.
Time to offend someone
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is not too different than what Questia has been doing for years. I'm sure Amazon's service is more polished and integrates better with their reader, but this concept isn't new by any stretch of the imagination.
We're essentially talking about an online library for a premium.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
These are digital texts books. They have near zero cost of reproduction. Is 80% less really that good a deal when you take that in to account?
As someone else already stated, this is just another model of artificial scarcity generated for commercial gain. I don't really see the logic in renting any digital product unless it happens to be an actual service.
I have copies of a number of textbooks from my degree - although some I've ditched. However, given how fast my particular subject - and many others - moves, I could be quite happy "renting" a textbook, where I always had access to the latest version. I don't need to buy / store every copy of a book, but to have access to the latest copy - in digital form - when I needed it, would be something I'd pay for.
With virtually zero cost of reproduction, and an ongoing payment stream to authors (and their publishers etc.), I wonder if this could be a viable model.
Most libraries have maximum loan times of 3 weeks and then you have to bring them back. Sometimes they let you (automatically) renew the book, but if somebody has it reserved, you often don't have that option. Libraries would not give you the option of keeping a text book for the entire semester.
How long does it take you to run off a couple photocopies? Used to be a stereotypical "early morning hangover" activity in the early 90s.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Rent.
Digital.
Choose one.
Dpends on your field, I think. I still have my old computer programming textbooks from university, but that's more due to nostalgia than anything else. Especially for things like languages that significantly over time (such as java), keeping old books is pointless.
So true. And it made me wonder. Is a science something in which the text books change slowly not annually? Computer science versus computer enginieering versus computer vocational training? How can it be science or even engineering if the textbooks go obsolete so fast?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Books placed on "reserve" can only be checked out for 2-3 hours at most places, so that all the students have a fair shot at the two copies of the textbook that the school has on hand.
A lot of books that I have gotten recently have a digital copy on CD or DVD along with the print copy. Most of them have their own build in reader that works on PC platforms. I doubt if I will ever purchase a purely digital version of a book, but it is nice occasionally to be able to search for a term you are looking for. But it is not enough of a benefit to justify having only a digital version.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
First day of the term, someone breaks the DRM on the rented copy and sells $5 copies to everyone in the class.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Imagine if we had the technology to take one book, and make copies of pages from that book, so that an entire class of students could somehow share the library's copy. It would be like a machine that took a photo of a page, then printed a copy of it. I bet there would be enough demand for such a thing that you could build a Fortune 500 company just producing them... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier
Palm trees and 8
Kindle has poor support for equations, so this is a non-starter in science, technology, engineering, and math. Amazon's page prominently shows a chem book with a big, color diagram of a molecule. But what the heck are they going to do when that chem book needs to show an equation? My understanding is that support for equations is currently extremely crude; Kindle's .azw format is mobipocket format with a layer of DRM. Mobipocket is zipped html, with no support for mathml, and images placed at the center of the page. In html I can use superscripts and subscripts to fake a certain amount of inline math, but anything beyond very basic equations is going to have to be shown as a bitmapped image standing at the center of the page on a line by itself. That just isn't how books with mathematical content are normally formatted. What about detailed diagrams like graphs or blueprints? Are these really legible on a kindle?
One thing that I can see that could be advantageous about this is that it could help to smooth out the shopping-for-classes period that happens at the beginning of every college term. The way this currently works is incredibly inefficient. Students stand in long lines at the bookstore, which typically pays for overtime and temporary student workers during that period. Students buy books for a class, drop the class, stand in line some more at the bookstore, and return the book. The bookstore either has to intentionally understock the book (meaning that some students won't be able to get a copy during the first couple of weeks) or else buy enough for every student, which means that after the shopping period is over, they'll have to return some to the publisher, paying for shipping. All of this creates lots of extra costs for the bookstore and/or publisher, which they pass on to students. It would be great if students could rent their books for the first couple of weeks, then buy once they're sure they're going to keep the course.
Personally, I have no intention of buying an ebook reader until there is a big, established market of DRM-free titles. When you buy a DRM'd book, you have to anticipate that it won't be readable in 5 years.
Find free books.
I routinely find myself referencing textbooks from courses that I took years ago. If students cannot afford their books, university libraries should provide copies; students should not be at the mercy of Amazon or any other company.
I agree with you that Universities SHOULDN'T be gouging their students on book fees, or rather should be providing alternatives to buying new... but how does that actually have anything to do with the service that Amazon claims to be providing? That's like saying Police are a bad idea because criminals just shouldn't be stealing. I mean, well DUH. But that's not happening. Universities aren't providing me copies of textbooks I need, and I am desperate to find ANY way to get these books cheaper than buying them new from the damn Bookstore. So if this is a bad idea, how about explaining why you think what Amazon is doing, is bad? I'll admit, I haven't looked into it a ton to find all the problems with it... but if they are actually going to rent me a textbook (Which I see no problem with) at a discount of 80% for a set period of time... I fail to see what is so terrible about this. Sure, it's not as good as owning the textbook, making your own notes, and being able to reference it many years later... but when you're a broke student, you have to make do with a lot of things that aren't as good as an alternative.
My wife tried a rented textbook for a required "fine arts" class - required for the major but completely irrelevant for it.
In short, she'll never do it again.
In long... To buy the physical textbook was $120. To rent it for 1 semester, $80. We thought, wow, that's a ripoff, but we still had no desire to keep the book after the semester was over. (And standard practice, the previous editions of the book were not valid for the class so we probably couldn't resell it anyways.) We purchased the online version and started to deal with the limitations (you can only read it on the screen, you're limited in the number of pages you can print, switching between computers was a hassle).
If you're reading a fiction book, then flipping forward through the pages on a Kindle probably isn't a big deal. When you're trying to flip back and forth between pages of a textbook to answer questions and learn topics, it sucks. We'll pay $40 more next time to get rid of those limitations.
The biggest problem with textbooks is the fact that they are needlessly revised every year. Creating new editions reduces the usefulness of earlier editions, thus cutting into the used textbook market. I explicitly tell my students "use edition x or newer", rather than insisting on the newest edition. This requires microscopically more work on my side, while saving students massive amounts of money, since they can buy used textbooks. In some courses, I no longer use a textbook at all, as all necessary information is available on the Internet - just give the students a set of links with every lecture.
Anyway, don't worry, the whole problem will go away within 5, or at most 10, years. The dead-tree publishers are doomed, having already missed their chance to offer DRM-free ebooks. Self-published ebooks will become far more common. Some sort of brokers will likely develop - probably companies like Amazon - where people can submit their self-published books, and schools and instructors can download evaluation copies. The books will probably be DRM-free, because DRM is an impossible pain to deal with, giving authors who publish without DRM a substantial advantage.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The problem is that these books are huge and their runs are small. It's not like they're popular reading. A small lot has a greater expense per book.
Jeez, I hope I can get a discount for buying last-year's second-hand eTexts...
Had this been available when I went to college (mid 90s) and had I known what I know now,
I would have definitely jumped on this.
I still have piles of books that I never refer to, that are considered worthless because of constant book edition updating every semester.
In certain fields (biological, social sciences) this makes sense as new discoveries are made constantly and premises are rethought and reviewed,
but for the most part the majority of this shit doesn't change every 6 months, and that's what handouts are for anyway.
For all of those who claim that keeping all their old books was worth it.... what are you offering me for my collection? :-)
There are already a bunch of textbook rental companies out there, CourseSmart being the one I've used most often. The concept is good, but because they lock the content down with so much DRM, it severely limits the usability. I want a simple PDF file that I can easily search. I'd even be willing to install some sort of Acrobat DRM control (in my Windows VM, mind you), and I'D PAY MORE if I could actually get a regular PDF file that simply stopped working on a certain date. I don't have any desire to try and search stuff on my iPad using the Kindle app, and the ridiculously locked-down stuff other companies have isn't much better. JUST GIVE ME A PDF!
If this is properly executed, and the universities don't manage to sue it out of existence, this could quite possibly knock the bottom out of the old college textbook scam.
Regards;
>Any notes or highlighted text will be saved via the Amazon Cloud for students to reference after the book is 'returned.'
Hear hear.
I am puzzled why open source text books have not taken off. For all the subsidies the government provides graduates you would think we would compel them to write and edit text books detailing much of what they have learned. And of course those books should be open sourced to be edited collectively by teachers that use them. There can't be more than a hundred different ways to write a calculus textbook so why does such a common subject cost so much?