Renting e-books? We’ve heard of that one before and it’s prettyintuitive. However,some of us would rather own e-books but often times books for education, business, and social sciences contain more information that we really need. Why not try this new service we stumbled upon over atSpringwise— electronic textbooks, sold by the chapter.

Mostly aimed for higher-education students, UK-basedReference Treeaims to give its users a way to purchase bite-sized portions of the textbooks by letting them pick only the chapters they need. It’s a unique yet effective way of reducing the students’ expenses while making sure that they can still efficiently complete their coursework. Chapter pricing begins as low as GBP 1.60.

Publishers including Elsevier, Taylor + Francis, Sage, Hodder Education, McGraw Hill and Cambridge University Press are actually already on board with the service, so you’re can be assured that the available collection is extensive. It even has features such as the ability to highlight and annotate text and, according to the report; coming soon will be the ability to collaborate with peers through shared notes and comments.

Story byFrancis Tan

Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social me(show all)Francis Tanis the Asia editor of TNW, who is based in the Philippines. He is particularly interested in Asian Internet startups, social media and e-commerce. Get in touch with him via Twitter@francistanor Emailfrancis@thenextweb.com.

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