College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon

A month or so before back-to-school season begins in earnest, Amazon has jumped into the lucrative college textbook market withKindle Textbook Rental.

Amazon claims students can save as much as 80% off textbook list prices by renting from the Kindle Store. The company is offering tens of thousands of textbooks, which students can rent for periods ranging from 30 to 360 days. Amazon has also extended its Whispersnyc technology so that students can access all their notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, even after the rental agreement is over.

Amazon’s entry, which comes after rival Barnes & Noble‘s, arrives as the National Association of College Stores estimates that U.S. college stores posted $10.25 billion in sales for the 2009-2010 fiscal year with each student spending $745 on average.

Amazon, of course, has had tremendous success converting the general market to ebooks. In May, the online retailer announced sales for its digital book format had surpassed hardcover sales. Meanwhile, publishers — aware of the migration into ebooks — are attempting to get ahead of the trend as well. In January, McGraw-Hilllaunched its first cloud-based textbook, which was aimed at the K-12 market.

First Google eBooks Device To Go on Sale at Target This Week

 by Todd Wasserman

Google will make inroads into the ereader market next week when the first such device using the Google eBooks platform will go on sale at Target.

The iriver Story HD will retail for $139.99 — the same price as theKindle and the Nook Simple Touch Reader — at the chain July 17, according to a blog post from Google. The device sports a qwerty keyboard and a black-and-grey screen similar to the Kindle. It also can access more than 3 million free Google eBooks and hundreds of thousands of paid ebooks in the system. The device is the first to be able to download the eBook titles via a Wi-Fi connection. Previously, users had to download the titles with a PC and then transfer them to the ereader.

Google entered the ebooks market in earnest in December with its Google eBookstore. Since then, the company has been expanding distribution for the format — it added its 250th independent bookstore partner in May.