Mlearning Article #4 Kindle

“Amazon Tries Taking the Kindle to School, Again, with Textbook Rentals”

This is a short article on Kindle trying to break into the textbook rental market. Kindle has dominated e-book sales, but has only recently tried the e-textbook rental market. They now are going to rent or sell textbooks at a much lower price than their print prices, and rentals will be priced according to the amount of time they are kept (with a 30 day minimum). Renters will be able to see the notes they made in their books even after they return them. Amazon is a little behind the curve, with companies like Chegg and Barnes and Noble already offering textbook rentals. Amazon has not made much headway in the college market.

I found this article interesting after having read, “Why We Won't Purchase Any More Kindles at the Unquiet Library.” The impression I got from that article is that Kindle has underestimated the school/ library market and failed to meet their needs. The author of this article seemed surprised that they had yet to try textbook rentals, with the success of so many other start-up textbook rental companies. I find it strange that when selling something like books, Amazon could fail to immediately target such a huge portion of book sales each year- school books! Libraries and schools aside, how could they overlook the large amount of money spent by college students alone?