Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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. Re:Bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:what happened to information wants to be free by FrostDust · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Right to read by Compaqt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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