College isn’t getting any cheaper, and that means students need financial help wherever they can ge it. Amazon.com is trying to pitch in, rolling out a new way for students to save up to 80 percent off electronic editions of textbooks.
The company today unveiled its Kindle Textbook Rental service, which allows students to rent digital versions of textbooks from leading publishers for 30 days to a full year. The service is set up that students can extend the rental period by a day or more for extra cost.
It is also designed so that students can save their digital notes, which Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said is an advantage over physical textbooks that are sold at the end of the semester.
“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,” Limp said. “If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”
Amazon isn’t the only company looking at attacking the textbook rental market. Chegg, a 4-year-old Santa Clara, California company, says it has already saved college students $240 million through its textbook rental program.
