CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CampusBooks.com compared pricing data for the top 100 college textbooks against Amazon’s new Kindle Rental service, and found that Kindle Rental often has the best prices, but only 18% of the titles.
Renting a Kindle book for the advertised 30-day period yielded the highest savings, often in the double-digits over traditional rental, used and new textbooks, but only five of 100 titles were available for the month-long range. The other 13 titles available had minimum periods of 60 days, and the savings were less.
However, if students were to rent via Kindle for a whole semester (120 days), only half of the time was Kindle Rental cheaper than buying and selling a used book.
CampusBooks, the top textbook price comparison website, retains pricing data from the millions of textbook searches through its site, including rental, used and new textbooks prices. To examine the new Kindle Rental program CampusBooks used the 100 most-demanded textbook titles, and compared their price history against the new Kindle Rental service.
“Kindle’s new service adds flexibility and more options for students, but we wanted to explore how much students would actually benefit. Until more titles are added, it looks like students may not find their books. They’ll still need to shop around, understand their options, and get what works for them,” says CampusBooks.com CEO Jeff Cohen.
“I have a Kindle, and have bought my textbooks on it before. I was excited about the new rental option, but when I scanned my book list for next year, none of them were on there. It’ll be great once they get more titles, but for now, I’m stuck with other options,” admits Trinity College senior Preston Maddock.
The data reported here is available for press via the media contact.
About CampusBooks:
CampusBooks.com was founded in 1998 and has evolved into a leading textbook price comparison website. CampusBooks.com is viewed by over 3 million students annually. The CampusBooks iPhone and Android application have been downloaded by over 40,000 users. The CampusBooks textbook price comparison tool includes new, used, rental, ebooks, local and libraries and is the most comprehensive in the industry. Additional information about CampusBooks can be found at www.campusbooks.com.