Today, Amazon.com announced the launch of Kindle Textbook Rental. With this service, students can save up to 80% off textbook list prices by renting from the Kindle Store. They can now even customize the rental periods between 30 and 360 days.

High saving for students

The service gives as much as 80% savings off the printed price on a 30-day rental. For example, a textbook has a buying price of  $109.20 for the actual book, but it may be rented at $21.84. This can be quite useful for the short term users. Dave Limp, vice president, Amazon Kindle says -

Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks. Now we’re excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need—with savings up to 80% off the print list price on a 30-day rental.

Flexible lending period

Amazon is providing flexibility of customizing rental periods to any length between 30 and 360 days to the students. So, now you have to pay only for the specific amount of time you are renting the books. The rental period can also be easily extended if desired. If you need your textbook longer than expected, the rental can be extended by as little as 1 day to any number of days you want to extend it.

There is a huge number of textbooks available for the 2011 school year from leading textbook publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Once rented, these books can be read using Amazon’s free Kindle Reading Apps across several devices as PC, Mac, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Android-based devices.

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