Striking out on Amazon’s new textbook rental feature
What a perfect excuse.
Amazon's Kindle ebook reader. (AP Photo/ Mark Lennihan, file)
I’ve wanted an e-reader for as long as they have existed, but my college student budget has kept a Nook or Kindle just out of reach.
When I saw that Amazon released a new textbook rental feature for Kindle, I saw it as an opportunity. Especially when they advertise it with, “Save up to 80 percent off the list price of the print textbook.”
Eighty percent? Whoa. That’s a big gap. In fact, I thought, that’s enough savings to buy a Kindle and still come out with my rented textbooks in the black. Right?
Well…
The Mashable.com article said Amazon has tens of thousands of textbooks to choose from. Also, if you rent it for the Kindle, you also get it on your mobile device and laptop computer. Not a bad combo. I decided to test my luck and see what kind of savings I could get.
Here’s what I found:
Screenshot of Amazon.com's Textbook Rental Page. Click to enlarge.
Out of the five classes (15 credit hours, average for college students) I am enrolled in for the fall at the University of Kentucky, I only needed five books.
Now that is unusual, but I take communication/journalism and political science classes, two fairly popular majors, so my chances of big savings should be high.
But out of the five books I needed, only one of them was available on Amazon.com for the Kindle. And that one book was not eligible for the textbook rental program.
Shucks.
My hopes and dreams of getting my hands on my own Kindle were shattered as quickly as they were shaped, but not everyone will have my luck.
