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."

Comments

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

They should choose books that don't charge hundreds per copy. The textbook racket needs to be broken up with kickbacks to instructors or universities strictly called unethical.

Re:Bad idea

[Wiarumas]

I doubt you reference ALL of them. Books relevant to your major/career should probably be bought and kept, but there were dozens of books (each costing $100+) that I have absolutely no use for: math, chemistry, english, history, stat, etc. None of these are relevant to my major/career and I'd opt for a more entertaining book on a rainy day.

Right to read

[Compaqt]

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.

Re:Bad idea

[catchblue22]

Didn't you take notes in those courses?

In my first semester I made the error to rely on the text book (well, at least in one course). After that, I wrote complete notes for any course. Which resulted not only in me having the complete material covered in the course without paying anything, but also having it memorized much better than by using the book, because it all went through my brain in order to get into my notes.

Did I say I didn't take notes? I often find that in a field that I have continued to study or use, going back to the textbook is more useful than going back to my notes. In fact, I sometimes find that sections of the textbook that were less useful to me when I was learning the material become more useful as a way to solidify and enhance my knowledge. If the material has been digesting in my brain for a few years, the reliable and thorough explanations in a good logical textbook make more sense than they ever did before.