The Kindle may Kill Textbook companies!

Yesterday I blogged about how the Kindle & other E-readers most likely led to the demise of Border's Bookstores. I found that story kind of sad, but I find the Kindle's latest development nothing short of AWESOME! It turns out that Amazon is going to offer rentals of textbooks through the Kindle.

So instead of students paying $700-$900 on books for a semester, and then being able to sell them back to their college bookstore for a measly $100-$300; students will now be able to rent books from Amazon at a savings of up to 80%. Amazon states that it will have in excess of 10,000 textbooks ready to rent for the Fall 2011 Semester for students.

Neat features include that a student gets to pick a rental time. Anywhere from 30-360 days, which they can extend for a day at a time. So, if as in the case of SUNY Oswego, if your final gets snowed out you can continue to plug away at studying for ONE-MORE-DAY if you need to.

Also great is the fact that Amazon is extending its Whispersync technology, allowing students to keep their notes and highlights in the Amazon Cloud, even after the point in time which the rental expires.

Perhaps greatest of all is the fact that as with all other Kindle books, Kindle Textbooks will be “Rent Once, Read Everywhere,” capable. So students can rent it on their Kindles and then read it on their: computer, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Android phone, BlackBerry, etc. etc. etc. This will eliminate lugging around anywhere from 25-50lbs of textbooks. And its a bonus that you aren't relegated to the small Kindle screen, but that you can read the book on your larger computer or laptop screen if you would like.

I only wish that Amazon.com had this available while I was in law school. It would have saved a boatload of money and back pain.