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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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.

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/