Amazon lets students rent textbooks via Kindle

19 Jul 2011

E-commerce and cloud giant Amazon has revealed a clever new service that allows students to rent textbooks on their Kindles and via Kindle apps on iOS and Android devices.

Under the new service, students can customise rental periods between 30 and 360 days and only pay for how long they need the e-books. Accessing textbooks this way could save students up to 80pc of what they would originally have spent.

“Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks. Now we’re excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need – with savings up to 80pc off the print list price on a 30-day rental,” said Dave Limp, vice-president, Amazon Kindle.

Kindle Textbooks are ‘Rent Once, Read Everywhere’ as they can be read across the most popular devices with free Kindle Reading Apps for PC, Mac, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Android-based devices.

“We’ve done a little something extra we think students will enjoy,” Limp explained.

“Normally, when you sell your print textbook at the end of the semester you lose all the margin notes and highlights you made as you were studying.

“We’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you get to keep and access all of your notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, available anytime, anywhere – even after a rental expires. If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced,” Limp said.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com