RentScouter

Amazon's Kindle Textbok Rental Store

Amazon is entering the textbook rental landscape by launching their Kindle Rental program today.  Amazon’s textbook buyback credit program is doing very well with their high prices, but they are very late to the online textbook rental market dominated by players like BookRenter and Chegg.  However, never discount Amazon which is willing to lose money on items or in a new market to gain market share.  They have been heavily marketing to college students with their Amazon Student Savings Program which offers free two day shipping on the millions of textbooks available at Amazon.  Amazon is claiming to save college students up to 80% if you rent textbooks on the Kindle.

Nothing new with how much renting textbooks online for college can save students – so does Amazon offer anything new versus the established online book rental companies or other electronic textbook companies like Kno?  The program apparently allows college students rent books from 30 to 360 days, which is nothing new, and that thousands of textbook titles are immediately available from top higher education publishers like Elsevier, Taylor&Francis, and John Wiley & Sons – again nothing new.  Amazon is allowing students to store highlighted content and book notes in the Amazon cloud, even after the textbook rental period has expired which is a new twist, but how useful?  Kindle textbooks are supposedly in a format that can be read on a variety of mobile platform via Amazon’s Kindle reading apps.

Well, let’s see Amazon:

1) College students can control their online book rental time period – nothing new

2) Textbook rentals can save students up to 80% versus new textbooks – nothing new

3) Electronic textbooks can be viewed and read on a variety of devices – nothing new

4) Offering thousands of books for rent online – nothing new

5) Students can save notes and highlighted content in the Amazon cloud – new, but useful?

The RentScouter team is not amazed by the Kindle Textbook Rental Program, but considering Amazon’s aggressive pricing tactics this could result in great textbook rental prices for college students.

How does Amazon’s textbook rental program compare to some of the others out there:

NOOKStudy – You get a free seven day trial period before you have to purchase or rent your school book for 180 days.  This is a more comprehensive offering versus Kindle Book rentals as it offers students a hub to digitize their schedule, store notes, homework, or class schedule information.  However, it isn’t currently available on mobile platforms.

Kno – Textbooks on the iPad, what else needs to be said?  Well, it is a good start, but we have reported that students still prefer printed textbooks almost 9 to 1.  However, as we covered Kno has some unique features in their quest for offering cheap textbooks online including social sharing – “WTF”.  Perhaps a great program, but no option for Window OS users at this time.

Inkling – The app is free and you can rent college books by chapter online instead of having to buy the entire textbook.  Great concept, but again limited to the iPad and their library has less than 1,000 book titles currently – we hope it grows.

Chegg’s eBooks – What does one of the leader’s in traditional college textbook rentals offer?  An online only service with a good selection of school book titles, but limited to PC users only.

Your best bet is probably still a textbook rental, but electronic texbook options are growing rapidly and offer promise in the coming years.

Renting college textbooks online is becoming a popular solution to finding cheap textbooks online.  If you would like to rent college textbooks online be sure to get a textbook rental price comparison to save a lot of money each and every semester. Sure, you won’t be able to sell back textbooks for cash immediately when you are finished, but generally you are saving enough cash on the front end of renting textbooks that it doesn’t matter.

If you rent college textbooks online which textbook rental company is right?

Rent College Textbooks Online

There are many textbook rental companies – some will give you a lot more alternatives than others, and some are also more cost-effective than others. Some of them will even present you with a pre-paid shipping label so you can return the books with free shipping.  As for the rental period, you will be able to rent textbooks for as long as you need, just as long as you inform the textbook rental company how long you need the book, and you can generally even buy the rental if desired.

As for the study guides and software program packages that are needed for some courses, some online textbook rental companies will include them with your order and others will not. Even if they don’t incorporate every thing you’ll require, the cost of renting the textbooks will be so low that you’ll be able to afford to purchase the extra material from other locations. Or, most textbook rental companies have a several week no questions asked return policy if you need to cancel your class or the textbook rental does not have the necessary materials.  If you do have the choice to rent college textbooks online as well as the additional media material that comes with them make sure those combined costs are less than buying a used cheap textbook online.

So how much pizza money can you save by renting books rather than purchasing cheap textbooks and course materials? According to our textbook rental reviews, you can generally save anywhere from 65%-80%! Again, make sure you get a textbook rental price comparison before placing any orders.  You will need to be conscious of all your cheap book options prior to you renting textbook.

No matter what classes you’re taking, you really should be able to locate all the material you need on the web. The process of renting college textbooks online is normally fairly simple, as most textbook rental web sites are easy to navigate. Most firms are pretty fast with getting orders processed and shipped out. However, just to be on the safe side, you need to place your textbook rental order in a lot of time prior to classes start.

If you Rent College Textbooks Online it can save you lots of money for pizza.

Chegg, a leading provider of books for rent online, announced today it is expanding its digital services to college students in an ongoing effort to help campus students succeed in school.  Already a leader in renting textbooks for cheap, Chegg is now offering personalized digital educational tools which will help students everywhere save money, time and work more efficiently in college.

What are these new tools that Chegg is releasing?

We all know that Chegg acquired CourseRank awhile back, but today they released a new website showing off Cramster, the leading provider of homework help and solutions.  Already encompassing over 600 college campuses nationwide, the new site will allow course specific advice and homework help.  Chegg has been deploying its venture capital strategically over the last several months to bring about this inspiring change to the college world by giving students a new way to comprehensively organize their academic life.  Chegg hopes to have this service offered in over 1,000 schools by the end of 2011.  The new site is even offering a 14 day free trail of the service to college students who wish to get textbook specific solutions, homework help on any college subject, and a network of helpful experts to answer homework questions quickly.  Plus, Cramster is not just for college textbook answers, but high school book students, and anyone that might have a question about their homework.

With CourseRank, Chegg is offering detailed college specific information about college courses including grade distributions, student course reviews, a schedule builder, and of course textbook list to make renting textbooks for cheap quick and easy with Chegg or whichever textbook rental company offers you the best price.  Don’t forget to conduct a textbook rental price comparison at RentScouter today.  Check out the new site to get homework help or detailed college course information on your next classes.