Amazon offers up to 80% off digital textbook rentals

Amazon has gone and done all the college students out there a solid with a new savings program for textbooks. Amazon is offering students 80% off the price of any print textbook as a digital rental on the Kindle. That means you can get your books in digital format, save a ton of loot, and hit the parents up for a new eReader with justification. The only downside I see is that you won’t be able to sell your books for beer money after dropping a class.

Amazon will rent you a Kindle textbook for a minimum length, which is generally 30 days, for up to 80% off the list price. You can extend the rentals by as little as 1 day as often as needed and pay for the added days. It’s not clear what the extra rental fees are. I had no idea digital books were so expensive. The example that Amazon shows has a Kindle edition book at $109.20 with the print version at $184.99.

The rental version of the digital edition is $40.54. However, the only classes I ever had in college where you only needed a book for a month were summer courses. If you are taking a normal length class you will end up spending more for three months of rental fees than you could just buy for. If you take notes on the Kindle, you can access those notes for rented book s even after the rental expires.