• All Things D, Monday, July 18, 2011 11:58 AM

While it already dominates the e-book market, Amazon seems determined to challenge other markets, from full-feature tablets to online textbook renters. To that end, the ecommerce giant has opened a textbook store for its Kindle platform, where it is renting "tens of thousands" of titles for the upcoming school year.

Amazon will let students -- and anyone else, for that matter -- buy textbooks at a steep discount to their print list prices, and will charge them based on the amount of time they plan to hang on to the book. Amazon says it will generally require a minimum rental period of 30 days, and it will allow students to extend that period at their discretion.

Renters will continue to be able to access notes and highlights they've made in their texts even after they've "returned" the books. "The only surprise here, as All Things D notes, "is that it took Amazon this long to get into the business." Indeed, "It introduced the Kindle in the fall of 2007, and since then a flood of start-ups, like Chegg, Kno and Inkling, have targeted the market." Barnes and Noble already has its own e-textbook store, too.

Read the whole story at All Things D »