Amazon is going to be renting textbooks this coming semester. But wait, there's more! They are renting textbooks for the Kindle.
Amazon promises up to 80% savings on Kindle textbook rentals. The site also promises that your highlights and annotations will still be available after your rental expires. That part I don't really get, but that's okay.
As a relatively new Kindle owner and one who is about to embark on graduate school, I would certainly consider renting my textbooks. My main concern is that there aren't enough titles in a Kindle format to make this possible.
After a quick search in journalism, history, education and science, I finally found a textbook available for rental. Introductory Chemistry by Zumdahl has a Kindle rental price. For three months you can rent the book for $55.22. If you want to buy it, the tome will set you back $114 on a Kindle. The hardcover is $129. Of course, this particular title won't do me any good since I will work on my MA in education, not chemistry.
The rental savings are significant, but the lack of available rentals could be a problem.
I'm so glad to hear that textbooks are going digital. I teach high school social studies with books that are 10 years old. I rarely use them but when we do many students forget to bring them anyway. With the availability of textbooks digitally, and a large majority of my students with easy access through various gadgets including their smartphones (which they never forget) paper texts can be eliminated all together. Some states, including my own, California, are looking at using textbook funds to accomplish this which only makes since they are still textbooks. One report after Steve Jobs passed away was that he had a list of things to do and one near the top was to revolutionize textbooks, bringing them into the digital age. I hope it's still on Apple's agenda.
ReplyDeletehchaffee