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Amazon Lets Students Rent Digital Textbooks

Posted by Soulskill on from the disrupting-the-textbook-cartels dept.

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."

3 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Bad idea by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Bad idea by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The really depends on the course and the book. Throughout my university degree, I had to take courses from many different faculties. For my software engineering degree, I took biology, psychology, environmental science and many other courses that I had to buy textbooks for that I have no need for any more. Granted, I was able to sell the dead tree versions I bought, but I would have been nice to save even more money by renting certain textbooks for a single semester. Also, I had a lot of courses the recommended very bad textbooks, I would have much rather rented the required text and spend the remaining money on a good text that would have served my much better.

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      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Artificial scarcity is ... by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... an unfortunate business model for the 21st century and all our tools of abundance... http://www.artificialscarcity.com/

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    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.