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

Bad idea

[betterunixthanunix]

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.

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

[ilsaloving]

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.

Re:Bad idea

[catchblue22]

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.

Amen to that. If I didn't have many of the textbooks from old courses I took, it would almost be as if I never took the course in the first place. I have always thought that in many courses, you aren't merely taking them to fully learn the actual knowledge...you are taking them to learn that the knowledge actually exists in the first place. Later you find that you need the knowledge, or that it is interesting to you, and you go back and re-read the textbooks.

Re:Bad idea

[nedlohs]

University libraries likely do, when I taught we put a few copies of the text for the class into the reserve.

Why shouldn't amazon offer an additional service to students?

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.

Re:Bad idea

[CastrTroy]

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.

Re:Bad idea

[maxwell demon]

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.

Re:Bad idea

[Riceballsan]

Good for you, not all schools provide the option however, and very often actually upgrade the version of the book to obsolete it within a year, Telling students they absolutely must buy the 5th edition of the book to take the first class, then next year the follow up class has shifted the requirement to 6th edition. Or perhaps it's just a extra course completely out of the field that colleges like to put you through for the sake of keeping you well rounded, and you have no need to ever look back at again after you pass. it isn't always the case, but it is sometimes, and it never hurts to have the option to rent rather then spend the ridiculous prices some of these books can run.

Re:Bad idea

[h4rr4r]

A few is exactly right. As a poor college student I tried to use those, sadly when you have 400 folks taking one class the three copies in the library are not exactly enough.

How about not using a new edition of the book every semester?
Or for something like Chemistry 101/Calculus how about using something in the public domain? Not like either of those fields have really changed in the past 100 years.

Re:Bad idea

[vlm]

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.

Disagree strongly in theory, agree strongly in practice.

The old liberal arts idea was the "great books curriculum" where everyone had a common liberal arts canon of education. Everyone should have read at least Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and probably should own a copy if they're wealthy / cultured enough.

For financial reasons those books have been replaced in the sciences with "C++ in 24 hours for noobs professorial financial kickback edition new for 2011 obsolete in 2012" which invalidates both the common canon concept, and the "great books should be great" concept.

It would be very much like the philosophy department replacing Plato with the second Matrix movie, as long as they get a kickback.

Another example, you are not educated WRT history if you have read at least some of Gibbon's decline and fall. An educated person simply should own a copy of Gibbon. I do. However, your university history class will probably not require you to read Gibbon, you'll probably get stuck with "crappy flash in the pan (c) 2010 ancient history by mr forgettable" where mr forgettable's publisher provided the prof or dept head with a rather healthy kickback, your loss. And that book may as well be turned into cigarette paper once you're done with the class.

I don't know IT enough to know the classics, although I suspect Brooks would qualify. In CS I would think Knuth is obviously canon. The Little Schemer series is probably canon. I do know that someone who never read Knuth or Brooks does not really know as much as they think they do about computers.

It boils down to a collision between "great books" and corruption.

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.

Re:Bad idea

[betterunixthanunix]

It is neither illegal nor more expensive for the majority of undergraduate courses. Most courses only cover part of a textbook, and given the tremendous cost of some books (over $200 in some cases), you would need to find a photocopier that charged dollars per page before it became too expensive. Do you think that libraries keep photocopiers around because using those machines is a crime? It is fair use and was once a common thing for students to do.

Re:Bad idea

[bcrowell]

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.

Oh, please. This nonsense about kickbacks shows up every time this kind of topic is discussed on slashdot. Could we please have some evidence for these supposed kickbacks? I'm a college professor. I have never been offered a kickback by a publisher. I have never heard of a kickback being offered to any of my colleagues. It doesn't make sense to talk about kickbacks going to the school, either, because it's faculty who make decisions about textbooks, not administrators.

Yes, it would be great to have more books that don't cost the equivalent of their weight in heroin. But guess what? The traditional print publishers don't offer cheap textbooks. Using old books isn't an option, because accrediting bodies will ding you if you're using a book that's more than about 5-10 years. (Those bodies don't care if the subject is one like freshman calc that hasn't changed in a hundred years or more.)

The best thing is if faculty write books and make them free online. I've done that. (See my sig.) What have you done that makes you part of the solution rather than part of the problem?

Nice to have the option

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:what happened to information wants to be free

[FrostDust]

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.

Here come the lawsuits

[realmolo]

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.

Re:Here come the lawsuits

[UnknowingFool]

Why would publishers have a fit? In the current model, they only get revenue for the first purchase. When a student resells a book, they don't get a cut (at least I'm not aware that text bookstores give them a cut). In the rental model they revenue each time the book is rented. The bookstores however are another story.

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.

Artificial scarcity is ...

[Paul Fernhout]

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

Questia

[Hassman]

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.

Re:Good idea

[vlm]

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.

Hmm. $150 / 50 pages is $3 per page. Can you find a photocopier that charges less than $3 per page? Just sayin.

The "one guy buys it and we all share it" does not scale for multiple readings. The "one guy buys it and we all photocopy it" did scale. You can even illegally sell photocopies of the relevant chapters for perhaps twice the cost of photocopying and everyone still comes out ahead (well, not the greedy publishers, or the kick back powered profs, but no loss there).

Also I had a prof who collected a $20 bill from each student at the start of class to defer his extensive photocopying costs, and then provided hundreds, maybe thousands of photocopies of the best parts of all the best books. Probably pushed the limits of "fair use" to say the least. Everyone loved that arrangement.

math and diagrams; shopping for classes

[bcrowell]

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.

Re:math and diagrams; shopping for classes

[jsvendsen]

For what it's worth, I've bought kindle books (Wakker on prospect theory, for instance) that inlines math using images, so it is definitely possible. Of course, that sucks as much as math-as-images always does, so YMMV. Diagrams that are simple enough to not require color and small enough to comfortably fit on the screen are legible just fine. Also note that when you're buying a book for your kindle, you're also buying it for your nice, big, clear computer screen. Some material might be more legible using the different Kindle for $OS implementations.

Anyway, you are right in that mobi on kindle is a pretty poor format for mathematical content, but if it is done well it is at least workable.

PS: When I buy a DRM'd book, I do so with the explicit knowledge that I can back it up and strip the encryption off of it whenever necessary. I can see this argument in principle, but in practice the problem only exists if you can't be arsed to fix it.

Could be nice, depending on how it's implemented.

[Vrtigo1]

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!