14 DAY TRIAL // School is still a couple of months away, but Amazon is getting ready for the new school year with a new textbook rental program for students with Kindle. It's the first time it has introduced this type of service for the Kindle, since Amazon has only sold ebooks through the store until now.
Students, and everyone else, will be able to rent textbooks for as little as 30 days and up to a year.
If they only need them for a month, they'll pay about 20 percent of the listed price for the printed textbook.
"Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks," Dave Limp, vice president for the Amazon Kindle, said. "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," he added.
The company says that there are tens of thousands of titles available through the rental service. Textbooks are big business, but there have been relatively few 'disruptors' in the space.
Granted, even with the rental option, textbooks are going to be significantly more expensive than regular Kindle books. And if you do decide to rent them, you may end up paying for the books almost in full, if you keep them for too long.
Still, even so, the Kindle rental store is probably going to be one of the cheapest solutions.
"Kindle Textbook Rental offers the ability to customize rental periods to any length between 30 and 360 days, so students only pay for the specific amount of time they need a book," Amazon explained.
"Students can also easily extend any rental period in increments as small as one day or choose to purchase the book they are renting at any time," it added.