How Amazon's Kindle is poised to revolutionize textbooks

Because I spent my college years doing a lot of things I probably shouldn't have been doing, I've retained precious few memories of my time in the hallowed halls of higher learning. One thing I do remember with absolute clarity: College textbooks are damn expensive. But when students head back to campus this fall, they'll find a new, more affordable and more flexible option to the traditional bookstore shopping spree. Amazon.com this week launched Kindle Textbook Rental, enabling students to lease e-reader versions of tens of thousands of textbooks for as much as 80 percent off the list price.

Students can customize Kindle textbook rentals for periods ranging from 30 to 360 days, extending the lease in increments as short as one day--they can also purchase the rented title at any time. Because Kindle Textbooks fall under Amazon's "Rent Once, Read Everywhere" policy, students can access titles via free Kindle Apps for PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, iPods, Android devices, BlackBerry smartphones and Windows Phone 7 handsets. Amazon.com also will extend its Whispersync content synchronization technology to the new service, enabling students to store and access their margin notes and text highlights even after a rental expires, restoring all annotations in the event they choose to rent or purchase the same title in the future.

Students spend an average of $900 each year on textbooks, translating to 20 percent of tuition at the average university and half of tuition at the typical community college, according to U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups. The federation adds that textbook prices have grown at four times the rate of inflation since 1994 and continue to increase. Kindle Textbook Rental's pricing scheme could be a game-changer. One problem: Students are still wary of e-books. A National Association of College Stores survey published in mid-April reported that 75 percent of college students still favor print textbooks over their digital counterparts. That being said, almost 15 percent of students now own e-reader devices, up from 8 percent last fall, the NACS adds--52 percent of those students have Kindles, compared to 21 percent with Barnes & Noble's Nook and 10 percent with Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad.  

The savings promised by Kindle Textbook Rental seem likely to persuade many students to rethink their stance on the e-book format. But the digital textbook concept can bring about innovations even more significant more than reduced costs. The subjects that textbooks cover--history, science, law, you name it--don't stop evolving and changing just because a publisher goes to press; landmark moments and groundbreaking discoveries happen almost every day, meaning traditional printed textbooks are often out of date long before they even reach the student population. Connected devices like the Kindle enable publishers to push out digital content updates as events and circumstances warrant, guaranteeing that textbooks never go out of date and keeping students current on the forces reshaping their field of study. It's an idea whose time has already come in South Korea, which earlier this month said it will spend $2.4 billion to migrate all primary school students to digital textbooks and devices by 2015. And when it comes to the U.S., it will be the greatest innovation to hit campus since the keg stand.--Jason