Amazon.com has started a new Kindle textbook rental option for textbooks published by publishers John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Amazon is promising savings of up to 80% off regular textbook prices by renting Kindle versions that can be read on your Kindle, PC, Mac or any mobile device that has a Kindle app. All Kindle reader software is free, the Kindle reader itself can be purchased for $139 from Amazon.
The way the rental works is that Amazon requires at least a 30-day rental and up to 360-days. You can extend the rental at any time by a day or more and you can decide to purchase the book during your rental period if you choose. When you take notes or highlight text in the textbook using the Kindle software they will be saved beyond the life of your rental period. So for instance if you rent a book for a semester and take notes, and then end up needing that book again the next year you can rent it again and all of your notes will be restored intact.
While 80% off sounds like a great deal, it’s still going to depend on what your preferences are when it comes to textbooks as to whether this option fits you or not. Let’s take an example textbook in the form of Intermediate Accounting 13th Edition by Kieso, Warfield and Weygandt. Purchased new in Kindle format this book would cost you $109.20 or you can rent it for 30-days for $38.29:
Meanwhile the hardback physical version is available new for $183.53:
Or you can buy it in used condition from Amazon.com for around $70 with $4 for shipping, so assume $74 total:
And if you want to sell back your used textbook and it’s in good condition you can trade it in to Amazon.com for $78.69:
Or if you look to an Amazon.com competitor such as Chegg.com you can rent the physical version of this textbook for $45.49:
Any way you slice it it’s still the case that buying a used physical textbook that’s in decent shape gets you the best deal, and it’s an especially good deal if at the end of the semester you are able to sell it back to either Amazon or some other campus buy back store and get back a lot of the cash you spent to get the used version. Of course, a lot of that depends on whether an updated edition is coming out for the next year (usually the case) and how well you’ve taken care of the book.
Whether this Amazon Kindle rental deal makes sense for you also depends on whether you prefer to use a physical textbook that you can use a pen to take notes in, or whether an electronic version that’s more portable and can be read from any device is what suits your study needs. I know a lot of people just prefer the ability to flip pages and quickly reference diagrams, use tabs and jot notes using your favorite pen or pencil. Others value the ability to search a book using software search features, read the book from a mobile device easily while on the go and not have to carry a 5lb 700 page behemoth sized book everywhere. In a perfect world we’d be able to pay a price and get both formats, but that probably isn’t an appealing business model for the publishers.
To each his own of course, and if this Amazon Kindle rental deal sounds like your cup of tea then you can start trying it out this upcoming school year!
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