Amazon begins renting textbooks for Kindle

(CBS/AP) - Amazon.com is making a play at grabbing a bigger chunk of the college textbook market. It has begun renting textbooks on its Kindle e-reader.

The online seller says students can rent tens of thousands of textbooks from its online Kindle Store.

Amazon said its rental prices are as much as 80 percent lower than the list prices for the books.

Students can rent the books for as little as 30 days or as many as 360 days - and if they want to extend the life of the rental, they can add an extra day or buy the book if they want.

According to the National Association of College Stores, which represents more than 3,000 college bookstores, over 2,400 of its member stores offered rentals of physical textbooks in January, and nearly all are expected to do so by this fall. Students can also turn to Web-based textbook rental companies such as Chegg.com for physical books, or rent e-textbooks to read on devices such as a laptop or Apple's iPad.