Amazon to grow textbook rental business

It's back-to-school season, and Amazon.com is offering a service sure to help students’ wallets with e-textbooks.

On Monday, Amazon said that it will begin renting digital textbooks viaKindle Textbook Rentals

The e-textbooks should go a long way toward reducing students’ monstrous textbook bills each semester. Renting a digital text can save as much as 80 percent over the price of buying a dead-tree book, according to Amazon Kindle vice president Dave Limp.

Kindle Textbook Rentals allows students to pay based on how long they want to use textbooks, with periods ranging from 30 to 360 days.

And you don’t have to own a Kindle to use the service. Rented Kindle Textbooks can be read on many devices, including all of the iPads, smartphones, PCs or Macs, iPod Touch devices, and Blackberry, Windows Phone, and Android-based devices.