Amazon Announces Digital-Textbook Rentals

July 20, 2011, 6:09 pm

(This story was updated on July 21, 2011)

Amazon has rolled out an e-textbook-rentals program, which could bring more attention to the emerging model of treating textbooks like online subscriptions.

Students can now download temporary copies of textbooks on Amazon’s Web site for reading on a Kindle e-book reader or on a computer, tablet, or smartphone running free Kindle software. The system lets customers specify rental periods lasting anywhere from a month to a year. Amazon argues that the digital rentals can save students up to 80 percent compared with traditional print textbooks.

For example, one textbook, Intermediate Accounting, which retails at $197 in print and $109 as an e-book, would cost $57 to rent from Amazon for three months. Students have the option to purchase the e-book during or after a rental period, and can extend rental period in daily increments.

Students will also be able to refer to any margin notes and highlights they made in their digital textbooks after the rental period is over. Amazon has tens of thousands of titles available for digital rental from major publishers like John Wiley & Sons and Elsevier and Taylor & Francis.

“Textbooks by nature are a disposable product,” said Sarah L. Glassmeyer, a faculty services and outreach librarian at Valparaiso University School of Law, in Indiana.

Ms. Glassmeyer, who is also an assistant professor of law at the university, said she supports the move by publishers to offer more digital-textbook options, which she says can save students money and lighten their backpacks—especially when it comes to heavy case-law books.

She said the ability for students to quickly and cheaply access textbooks and margin notes appeals to a generation of students she described as “digital learners,” and she expects digital rentals to catch on.

CourseSmart, a digital-textbook seller started by major textbook publishers, allows rentals but only for periods of six months or more. “CourseSmart has found that the current rental periods offered are those preferred by students as they align with the length of a course,” said Emily Peck, senior account executive at CourseSmart.

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Who_Profits

This is the ultimate in ridiculous!! Self-regulation is a farce and the current process of American Higher Education accreditation is living (or dying, as the case may be) proof. Now we see some more window dressing designed to fool the public into believing that something is of high quality.

For example, take a look at the Code of Ethics available on Education Management Corporation’s website (Investor Relations page) http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9ODY5MjJ8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1. Read this carefully and you will no doubt get the sense that this is a wonderful, upstanding company that desires nothing but the best for all involved…beginning wtih students.

Now, if you can find any willing and not afraid to talk, ask current or former students what happened to them, their education, their careers or their lives if they sought redress for ethical violations on the campus level. I know of several of these students, first-hand. Despite a beautiful display of what this corporation stands for, this is not how it played out.

Take a look at the many lawsuits filed by current and former students. If you are lucky enough to find the actual complaints, you will not find anything about the outcomes. Again, this is by design. No one is allowed to talk so how are students to perform due diligence. Now these companies expect the public to take their ‘marketing of values’ as another rubber stamp of quality. It makes me sick!!
Who_Profits

The code will not have any teeth. There’s too much muscle behind these corporations. This move is nothing more than window dressing and marketing.
harmonygritz

I think one semester of students being able to specify a textbook rental period (e.g. 4 months instead of 6) will be enough to change the CourseSmart quote in the article. And I have in the past recommended the CourseSmart option for my own classes. Good luck, folks.
http://www.matthauger.com Matt Hauger

Is there any limit to the amount of text that a student can highlight? Theoretically, could a student mark up the entire book and ‘buy’ it for the rental price?

Does Amazon charge a premium for buying the book after the rental period?
http://twitter.com/drhoro Dr. Horo

Textbook companies don’t have educational content that’s as cool as the content @lyndadotcom, @kelbytraining, @tutsplus…
http://www.facebook.com/bernard.s.rollins Bernard S. Rollins

Going green by using technology to reproduce text books…
Emmadw

We’re just in the throes of moving most of our units (and the curriculum as a whole!) away from semester driven to year long units – with the exams at the year end. I know we’re not the only UK uni to be doing it, so wondering if textbook rentals really take off, they’ll also have the flexibility to meet needs of students who aren’t (US) semester driven.
http://twitter.com/philauter Phil Auter

As a professor, I would personally love to go to a portable electronic textbook….like my students already have the option to do. One perk of being the instructor of record is receiving a complimentary instructor’s copy. CourseSmart allows this, but not in a way that it can be read on a Kindle and is not really portable. Publishers do not seem to be able to offer instructors codes to allow for free Kindle copies of books they use to teach their classes. Amazon is also not yet providing these complimentary copies. Is there any move toward providing complimentary Kindle instructor editions to professors so I can join my students and put down my paper copy of the textbook?
iredale

$57 to “rent” an electronic textbook for three months? I wonder how much the author gets from that … probably a pittance.

Electronic textbooks are a great idea, but here’s the thing: there’s no need for a “publisher” in the conventional sense, and NO NEED FOR AMAZON.

Academic publishers exist because they own the printing presses and are willing to print textbooks on speculation in the hope that students will buy them. And historically, the role of the retailers (whether campus bookstores or Amazon) has been to store them in a “showroom” or warehouse until they’re sold.

But if the books are digital only, both the publisher and retailer are superfluous. They’ve become like vultures, and we and our students don’t need them.

I’d love to see someone put together a non-profit website for the distribution of e-textbooks. Keep overhead as low as possible, with the costs to students lower than Amazon and the author’s royalties higher. That’s entirely feasible, and it would be worth cheering about.
tonysanfilippo

I think publishers do more than print. Actually that’s something almost none of them do themselves, they typically use printers to print. What they actually do is edit, design, and disseminate.

There actually are already several non-profit sites that offer free course materials including MIT’s OpenCourseWare platform, and Rice’sConnexions. Free is a pretty good price for students.
alyssa_goodman

This is HUGE. I think digital textbook rentals will have an impact in academia like what movie rentals have had in your den…
rightwingprofessor

I can’t imagine the final price point ending up anywhere near $57 for a 4 month “rental” of an electronic book. Of course I am befuddled by the Kindle pricing for hardcover bestsellers also. A typical bestseller might have a retail price of $29.99 but routinely sell for $14 on Amazon, then the Kindle version might be $11.99. Is it really that cheap to actually print and ship the book?
aybattle

One important distinction is that you cannot technically rent an etextbook. The term rental implies that one person has temporary use of the product or service and then someone else takes possession, and so forth (like renting a car). With DRMd ebooks that eventually expire, because there is only a single user, it is actually a digital subscription, not a rental. Rentals of physical textbooks have existed for years.

There are several alternatives for professors to provide their students access to digital course content. In addition to the OER providers listed in an earlier post, products like AcademicPub allow professors to create often less expensive, custom books that are delivered in ebook format and expire 3 months after the end of the term.
alexz

The Saylor Foundation (www.saylor.org) does both open courseware and is building an open textbook library.
http://twitter.com/mburgerkestrel Mark Burger

Paper-based textbooks have become a racket at all educational levels due to publisher mergers and politically motivated school policies. The result is the outrageous prices for paper products. Electronic alternatives are a necessary and refreshing wind that will deflate a lot of the bloat. Amazon has its own issues, but their electronic “subscriptions” (good point, aybattle) are a good step on the road to modernity and fair pricing. I myself am co-authoring a community college-level text on renewable energy, and initially plan to go print through on demand publishing,then some electronic version. The main goal I see is to come up with an affordable product without screwing the authors. Freeware is fine for people who have secure jobs or trust funds, but most of us need to earn a living, especially in these treacherous times.
11272784

Students want this – and I don’t blame them. It’s past time.
phunterjones

In the UK, we are increasingly using, and releasing, open educational resources under a Creative Commons Licence. Two recent ‘free’ resources are:
An Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Business Academic. Questions, Answers and Checklists
http://research-archive.liv.ac.uk/3533/
and
Business Education Jargon Buster
http://research-archive.liv.ac.uk/3593/
Enjoy improving!
bruden2323

Flat World Knowledge (www.flatworldknowledge.com) is an open access publisher that let’s students read their books for free online.
http://www.facebook.com/iuricsantos Iuri Santos

E a tecnologia entregando novas oportunidades de acesso ao conhecimento.
PastryGoddess

I’m not sure I agree with this move. I had a really bad experience using a digital textbook. I think part of the problem was that the material was so dry (business ethics). But part of the problem was that the textbook was formatted in a way that was hard on the eyes. Note the textbook was only available to read on the computer. I have a Sony E-reader and an Ipad, so I’m not sure if that would have helped. I would have actually preferred to have the textbook hard copy than that digital textbook.
http://www.facebook.com/char.mentor Char Psi Tutor Mentor

Awesome! This is a boon for many higher ed students doing it tough during the economic crunch.
walkerst

For those academic libraries that do purchase textbooks, where are the publishers with developing library models? So far, with one exception, I know of no vendors that have a model whereby libraries can purchase electronic copies of textbooks, in particular, so that multiple users can take advantage of them. We’ve had e-books for ages now. But I’ve been given some frankly downright idiotic messages from publishers when we tried to ask about a library model for e-textbook purchasing. One even suggested that the library manage individual accounts and passwords for all students in a huge course, with many sections and hundreds of students! Yeah, right, that’s going to happen. It reminds me of the days when database vendors wanted us to do the same thing for every user who wanted access to a database.
bjones_y

I think the Amazon anouncement is a big move forward but they need to increase availability. Of the top 1000 textbook searches on my http://www.cheap-textbook.com price comparison service only 15% are available on Kindle. Coursesmart carried 82% and everyone else offering eBooks was under 50%.
R117532

Nice job.

Just for fun, I put your 500 words on a diet. I can reduce students’ essay by 60% with zero loss of content. I reduced yours a measly 10%, retaining the nuance of expression. Given the result, it wasn’t worth the effort; 50+ words come and go quickly. Fun to try.

A woman seated next to our famously laconic 30th president at a
White House dinner sallied, “Mr. Coolidge, I’ve made a bet that I can get you
to say more than two words.” Coolidge coolly dispatched her: “You lose.”

Like other stories that capture the grain of a man, this one is unsubstantiated.
It exists in dozens of versions but has no reliable firsthand observer. But it
is worth treasuring the same way we treasure Parson Weems’s fables (“I cannot
tell a lie.”) about George Washington’s childhood.

Succinctness in riposte is one thing. (“Nuts,” was General McAuliffe’s reply
to the German demand that he surrender during the Battle of the Bulge.) It is
harder to achieve when the occasion calls for synthesis. Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address offers a new birth of freedom in 271 words. Hamlet’s “To be, or
not to be” soliloquy grunts and sweats a weary 276.

But who am I to advise? Succinctness usually eludes me. The Chronicle of
Higher Education a few years back proposed that I post two 500-words blogs
per week. I seldom manage to keep them under 1500. My dissertation ran nearly a
thousand pages. The publisher of my book, Diversity, deemed it sufficient
at 300 pages and orphaned five chapters. Last week a put-upon reader posted a
comment to my article, “Could you please write more succinctly and clearly.”

Succinctness has its season. In the age of Twitter, Samuel Johnson’s quip
about Paradise Lost (“None ever wished it longer than it is.”)
distills sentiments of readers who want the naked point, not the verdant
context. Yet, this is also an age of massive no-incidental-fact-left-behind
biographies and multi-volume novels (Harry Potter; The Hungry Twilight
Games) which testify to an undead thirst for epic and romance. Yet, the
balance tilts to brevity. The characteristic poets are spare; op-eds are terse;
and prescription re-fills are digitized.

I have company in the professoriate in saying more than needful. I burn
incense at the Shrine of the Footnote and when roads diverge in a yellow wood,
I take both. Still, I’ve learned the hard lessons of how to walk in few long strides.
Thus:

Light a fuse. “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a
date which will live in infamy—”

Face facts. Don’t skimp on details; revel in them. The
right ones make a point better than any well-crafted generalization.

If it doesn’t need explaining, don’t.

Hear the rhythm. “We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Don’t scrape away modifiers. You’re not sending a telegram.
Kill sentences and burn paragraphs instead.

Find the apt metaphor. Jonathan Swift poked the spiritually
somnolent with a sermon, “Upon Sleeping in Church.”

When you’ve made your point, shut up.