亚马逊推出纸质教科书租赁业务

Mehdi Maghsoodnia, chief executive of BookRenter.com, welcomed Amazon's move, saying it would increase awareness of textbook rental services. BookRenter.com and Chegg offer similar discounts to Amazon.
BookRenter.com首席执行官麦迪•马苏德尼亚(Mehdi Maghsoodnia)对亚马逊此举表示欢迎。他表示，这将提高人们对教科书租赁服务的认识。该网站和Chegg提供与亚马逊类似的折扣。

"It's a recognition that the reality is that 99 per cent of the educational market continues to use physical texts," he said: "To help students, given the increase in tuition fees, you have to lower the cost of textbooks."
"我们承认，实际情况是99%的教育市场将继续使用实物教科书，"他表示，"要帮助学生，鉴于目前学费上涨的幅度，你必须降低教科书价格。"

According to the National Association of College Stores, US students spend on average $655 a year on required course materials. Multiplied by roughly 20m students in college, that suggests a $13bn market, BookRenter noted.
根据全国大学商店协会(National Association of College Stores)的数据，美国大学生每年在规定教材方面的平均支出为655美元。BookRenter指出，把这个数字乘以大约2100万大学生，说明市场规模为130亿美元。

Mr Maghsoodnia said by some estimates rental could grow to be half of the market by volume, although such a shift would reduce the overall market's value in dollar terms.
马苏德尼亚(Maghsoodnia)表示，根据一些估计，租赁业务可能将占到这一市场的一半，尽管这一转变可能会降低以美元计算的整体市场价值。

Several publishers have worked with print and digital rental services. McGraw-Hill and Chegg announced a partnership in 2009, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced a deal on Tuesday with Kno, an education software company, offering year-long digital rentals of school texts for $9.99 or less per book.
几家出版商已经在纸质和数字租赁服务上采取合作。2009年，麦格劳希尔集团(McGraw-Hill)与齐格网建立合作关系。周二，霍顿-米夫林哈考特集团(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)也宣布与教育软件公司Kno合作，以每本9.99美元甚至更低的价格提供为期一年的学校教科书数字租赁服务。

Many college students still find that selling their print textbooks once they have finished with them is cheaper than buying or renting their digital equivalents, Outsell reported this year.
研究机构Outsell今年表示，很多大学学生仍然认为完成课程之后出售纸质教科书要比购买或者租赁电子版教科书划算。