Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Rental Program

Amazon announced that it has a new Kindle textbook rental program for college students. This is another reason why consumers should not walk into another brick-and-mortar bookstore to buy books. The announcement came out the same day Borders bookstores said that it has filed for bankruptcy. The bookstore chain blamed the changing book industry as well as the economy.

A poll made last October showed that 63 percent believed that ebook readers have decreased the profits of print books while 22 percent of book sellers believed that ebook readers decreased their sales. 70 percent of those surveyed said that ebook readers would affect the sale of new books than used books.

Amazon’s new textbook rental program lets the students save all the notes and highlighted contents from a rented book and access them in the future. Online book sellers view textbook rental companies as their fierce competitors.

Barnes & Noble said that it is struggling to survive as consumers buy three digital books for every physical book. This is the reason why the company is trying to reinvent itself into a vendor of book downloads, reading apps and devices. Every retailer is faced with the same problem and they have to adjust to the changing technology in order to survive.

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Amazon Gets Go Signal To Collect Signatures Against Tax Measure

Amazon.com wants the so-called Amazon Tax Law repealed. It doesn’t want to collect sales tax from California residents because it doesn’t have a physical store in the state. The California Retailers Association, which includes Wal-Mart, the Gap and Target, has put together a war chest that the group will use to counter Amazon’s efforts.

The group said that without the tax fairness, more stores could close for good. According to them, consumers would go to retail stores and look at the merchandise and go home to buy them online because they don’t have to pay taxes.

If Amazon manages to get more than 504,000 voter signatures by September 27, then the new sales tax law will be placed on hold until California voters can vote on it next year. The online retailer’s strategy is to show the new tax law as a job killer.

Other online retailers are siding with Amazon and hopes that the voters see how the Amazon tax law will affect the economy. There are around 25,000 Amazon affiliates from California who were removed so that the company could avoid collecting sales tax.

The brick-and-mortar stores want the voters to realize that the Amazon tax law is not a new tax. It is just something to cover the sales tax that was not collected from online purchases.

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