Amazon Lights Up a New Feature for Their Kindle: College Textbook Rentals - The UpStream

Amazon Lights Up a New Feature for Their Kindle: College Textbook Rentals

posted Tuesday Jul 19, 2011 by Nicholas DiMeo

Amazon Lights Up a New Feature for Their Kindle: College Textbook Rentals

Are you a college student and own a Kindle? Well, you just may be in luck if you're looking to buy or rent a textbook on the cheap. This week, Amazon has started to rent out those $6,000 college textbooks on their awesome Kindle device. Some books are even 80% off retail price. Hooray! You can now afford something other than noodle cups again!

Amazon's statement this week said that you can get textbooks from John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. The cool part here is students can rent the books on their Kindle based on how long they need it. Amazon has set up a custom rental option that will allow you to select between 30 and 360 days, perfect for an express class or a year-long session.

For more on what's in store and what the company has to say about the new feature, click that break.

Dave Kimp, Amazon Kindle's VP chimes in,

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 80% off the print list price on a 30-day rental.

This is a great move for Amazon, who benefits from this in many ways. Not only will this potentially put more Kindles into hands of college students, who are already strapped for cash and can't shell out $500 for an iPad but could use a $125 Kindle, but the ones with iPad, TouchPads or Android tablets already can load the Kindle app onto their devices and enjoy the textbook goodness.

Fun fact: Barnes & Noble operates many college bookstores, so the competition here might get a little interesting. B&N does have a feature that lets students use e-textbooks on the NookStudy app.

We'll see if the idea grows in popularity or if it'll just be another flash in the pan or looked at as just a minor useful addition to the Kindles.

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