Just in time for back to school, co-eds will now be able to rent textbooks through Amazon.com for use on their Kindle e-reader.
Students will be able to rent for a specified period of time from 30 to 360 days, add individual days as needed, or buy the book outright. Amazon says that renting textbooks through their website will save students up to 80% off the cost of physical books in a bookstore.
One other unique feature is the use of Whispersync technology, which will allow students to save any notes or highlighted material from the e-book in Amazon’s cloud, even after the rental period has expired. So far though, the general consensus is that most students will still buy new or used textbooks the old-fashioned way, or will gravitate towards e-textbooks that can be stored and accessed on a laptop or netbook. This would eliminate the need to carry around yet another device.
Personally, I’ll never give up the feel of a book. Turning the pages, pink highlighter everywhere, notes scribbled in the margins. But with some textbooks costing up to $300, renting may not be a bad idea, especially if you know you won’t need the book forever. Thing is, there are a lot of companies out there besides Amazon that offer this service, so my best advice: do you homework!
Hi Steph…
This is a great article. As much as I love to listen to audiobooks….when it comes to school, I still want the old fashion text book. Just like you, nothing replaces, pink highlighters and notes in the margins.
What I’ve done to save money is trade with classmates. If they’ve taken a class I need to take and vice versa, we swap books…that saves a lot of money too!
Hope you are staying cool!
Great post.