Amazon.com launches Kindle textbook rentals with up to 80% off

[RamboLiberal]

Amazon.com launched Kindle textbook rentals, promising "tens of thousands of textbooks" at discounts of as much as 80% less than purchase price on Monday.

Students can rent a textbook for as little as 30 days or up to 360 days, with fees differing depending on how long the book is rented, Amazon said in a statement.

Rentals can be read on Amazon's Kindle eReaders, as well as Kindle apps for Macs and PCs, as well as smartphones and tablet computers running Apple's iOS, Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and Google's Android operating system.

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"We've done a little something extra we think students will enjoy," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon's Kindle unit. "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."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/07/amazoncom-offering-up-to-80-discounts-on-kindle-textbook-rentals.html

[phantom power]

1. are they planning to support lending books?

[d_r]

2. I doubt it

They would be copy right protected so that you couldn't copy from one kindle to another. But it probably would let you have a copy on your pc and your kindle, so you could probably share that way. That is AWESOME that they are letting the annotations stay alive like that.. In terms of text books, this is a great way for students to save a few bucks.

They are also extending kindle ebooks to library loans, that is a different thing.