College students used to paying hundreds of dollars per semester for books might get a little relief from a rental program for digital textbooks.

Online bookseller Amazon.com announced Monday the Kindle Textbook Rental Program, which will allow students to rent "tens of thousands" of textbooks for a fraction of the cost of buying them in a university bookstore. The program works with the Kindle e-reader and Amazon's e-reader application for other devices.

"Now we're excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need — with savings up to 80 percent off the print list price on a 30-day rental," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, in a statement.

Setting aside convenience and portability, the biggest attraction of digital textbooks is the cheaper price. Both the University of Utah and Brigham Young University bookstores already offer digital copies of some of their textbooks through other systems, which provide up to 40 percent savings over the print versions of textbooks.

Bookstore officials at Utah Valley and Utah State universities say they currently have only a small number of textbooks available digitally.

University of Utah pre-med student Rachel Zimmerman once rented a digital version of an American history textbook for her laptop and thought it was much better "to port around than a 20-pound book." "[Students] like its ease of accessibility with so many more students carrying the iPad and the Kindle," she added. "You just press the 'on' button and it's right there in front of you."

Under the new Kindle rental program, users can rent a digital version of a textbook for 30 to 360 days, after which access to the book is locked.

Students can make notations and highlights and save them to Amazon's new virtual "cloud" service for later access, available even after the book expires and the student wants to rent it again.

In addition to the Kindle, Amazon's digital textbooks can be purchased and read through the Kindle reading application available for the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile 7 and Blackberry.

On average, each student paid $667 on required course materials in the past year, according to a study by the National Association of College Stores. The average cost of a new textbook is $62, up $6 in the last five years.

"Each semester they're getting way more expensive," said Dave Nelson, lead textbook buyer for the University of Utah's Campus Store. "The publishers feel like they've got a clientele, and they keep raising them. Now they're over $150. I won't even talk about the medical books. They've got some over $400."

The U. uses the Course-Smart digital download e-textbook system, while BYU largely uses the CafeScribe system, as does Westminster College. Both are rental programs in which the student can "own" the book for 180 to 360 days before it's locked on their device.

CafeScribe offers a new version that allows students to make highlights and notations, and share those notes with other students within the college who have the same book. Interactive features like that are what CafeScribe thinks makes its system distinctive.

"Our software is optimized for textbooks. What works for tradebooks [digitally] doesn't necessarily work for textbooks," said Isabella Hinds of Follett Higher Education Group, which owns CafeScribe. "The needs of the higher-ed community are much better addressed by our solution."

Amazon's Monday announcement probably won't make a big difference in digital textbook sales at BYU, which already has a partnership with the online retailer, according to Elaine Huish, the store's assistant textbook manager.

While e-textbooks currently account for only about 5 percent of total textbook sales at BYU, Huish sees digital textbooks as the future of higher education.

"Some people just say they will never go e-book, and they want a book to carry with them — they know it's a part of their education," she said. "But our textbook manager, for example, has children in elementary school who are 100 percent learning off the computer. We know it's coming."

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