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BookRenter.com offers students the chance to save hundreds on textbook costs a semester.
Students rejoice, the Netflix of textbooks has arrived to bring you (somewhat) lower costs

It's always fun to see a clever business model cooked up and delivered to the masses.  That's the case with BookRenter an enterprising startup that aims to become the Netflix of textbooks, helping college students everywhere stay on budget.

The scheme arose amid record high prices for college texts.  Some textbooks retail for $200 or $300, even.  An average college student taking a full course load can easily spend $500 to $1,000 per semester on textbooks alone.

BookRenter looks to remedy that.  Users can search for books via their title or ISBN.  They then specify a rental period and delivery option.  The books are delivered with return UPS labels for easy return shipping at the end of the exchange period.

The scheme is a win-win for all involved.  Students get textbooks at a fraction of the costs.  And BookRenter can buy one text and rent it multiple times, ultimately recouping significantly more than the purchase cost.

After $6M USD in preliminary funding, BookRenter just scored $10 million in a Series B financing round.  The new funding will allow the startup to offer rental stores customized for a specific university.  BookRenter offers the tools necessary for any university to set up its own branded online rental shop.

Currently, the site has 75 university partners including the University of Texas at Austin, North Carolina State University, the University of Memphis, the City College of San Francisco, and the University of San Diego.  It also boasts 1.3 million student subscribers.

BookRenter isn't the only textbook rental service in town, though.  Barns and Noble and Chegg(another startup) both offer similar services.  In fact Chegg and BookRenter both claimed to have come up with the "#1 In Textbook Rentals" slogan, a fight which recently was taken to court.

Ultimately, BookRenter and its competitors all look to enjoy some measure of success in this burgeoning market.  Students, professors doing research, and even universities can all benefit from reduced textbook costs.  About the only parties that lose out are textbook writers (usually professors) and textbook publishers.  Ultimately, there's little they can do, though -- these internet rental services can always buy books on the free market.

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College text books are a rip off
By Bioniccrackmonk on 6/3/2010 10:41:46 AM , Rating: 2
I remember back in my college days when I was taking Calculus. Calc 1, 2 and 3 were in the same book, so I paid $200 for it and was content because it was suppose to cover 3 classes. Then, the university I was attending decided to use a new book when I was scheduled to start Calc 3 so I had to buy a new book again!!!!

Renting would have been a nice feature but that wasn't available in early 2000.




RE: College text books are a rip off
By Yames on 6/3/2010 11:12:04 AM , Rating: 3
I remember our books hitting $100+ in the early 90's and thinking of how absurd it was. I guess we were getting a deal, lol. The whole thing is a scam and the only way to fight back is with a system like this. I hope they are wildly successful.


RE: College text books are a rip off
By Noya on 6/3/10, Rating: 0
By kmmatney on 6/4/2010 2:56:00 AM , Rating: 2
I went to UCLA during the late 80's and early 90's - we were paying less for books. Most books I could get for around $50-$60 dollars, but it was a little shocking when they crept up to the $100 mark. Books were also used for a longer period of time, so it was easier to sell your book back, usually for $20 less than you paid, so in effect you rented the book for $20.

We also paid less for tuition, with my first year at UCLA only costing ~$1200. By the time I graduated, it had crept up to $1800 or so. Still a bargain.


RE: College text books are a rip off
By Spivonious on 6/3/2010 11:19:30 AM , Rating: 2
What irked me was how the publisher would release a new edition and the only change was a reordering of the chapters. And don't get me started on the classes that "required" the textbook and then never used it.


By AssBall on 6/3/2010 4:51:37 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, those two things really pissed me off too, pay for a $200 book and open it once.

Then sometimes my dumbass would have to retake a class, and they were like you need edition 5 now, 4 won't work. The only difference was the numbers they used in the practice problems (a good part of our grade), so I had to buy it again. Ass holes.


By Rugar on 6/3/2010 12:11:49 PM , Rating: 2
I well remember how much I *HATED* buying those overpriced books and I've tried any number of alternative options for classes I teach including digital textbooks. The problems to date for me have been finding anything other than very general texts and that the purchase price for digital books is often no cheaper than that for the physical copy.

Ideally, within the next few years someone will set up a system where students can rent/check out electronic books from a relatively large catalog in a common format (like .pdf or eBook). Until that time, professors are stuck having students use over-priced textbooks.


By Mogounus on 6/3/2010 12:38:13 PM , Rating: 2
Nothing new has changed in Calculus in the last 50 years(almost)... how can they justify coming out with a new book every 2? Those f#$%ers at the school boards probably get kickbacks for going with the new versions. Instead of doing what's right and trying to save already cash strapped students some money they just bend them over and try and get as much out as possible.


RE: College text books are a rip off
By DanNeely on 6/3/2010 1:10:13 PM , Rating: 2
What I hated was in Astrophysics 1/2 the book for sale in the bookstore the with the first semester was the first half of a ~4" thick book. Our prof had the monster edition but recommended that we only by the slim one even if we were planning to take both semesters because it was half as expensive and we could get the second half next semester and have two smaller books instead of one huge one. Most of the class, myself included, took him at his word. Next semester we found out that he was wrong and the only way to get the material in the second half of the monster was to buy the monster.


By AssBall on 6/3/2010 4:56:02 PM , Rating: 2
I remember havign to pay $80 for a book that one of our professors wrote. It was a crappy spiral bound paperback with no color and poor printing. I thought, really??? 75 bucks for this POS??? Jesus F. Christ.


By eddieroolz on 6/3/2010 9:09:09 PM , Rating: 2
Ouch, that must have hurt.

I managed to get by Calc1 and 2 with the same book. But man, they are bloody hell expensive.

I'm taking 3 courses for summer and textbooks alone have cost me $400. I honestly don't think a bundle of paper is worth nearly that much.

I hope this program will extend to Canada as well. I will be a happy customer then!


By HotFoot on 6/4/2010 10:57:19 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, it's a total scam. My mechanics textbook was identical year after year, except the cover would change, and they'd re-order the problem sets at the back of the book. They wouldn't even have different problems - just scrambled the order of them so if you used last year's textbook you'd have to go around figuring out what problems the rest of the class was doing so you could be on the same page as them.


lolwut
By wuZheng on 6/3/2010 10:51:17 AM , Rating: 3
Most students just go and buy the "International Edition" the exact same book verbatim, but at like 1/10th the cost. The caveat here is that these editions are explicitly marked to not be sold in the North American market.

So is it legal?
- I don't care.
Morals violated/should be violated?
- Not at all.

Thats the attitude that I have about the purchase of textbooks in the grey market, and its the attitude that most students have. And given where the textbook industry seems to be heading (minor changes for greater profit), its the attitude that most students SHOULD adopt.




RE: lolwut
By inperfectdarkness on 6/3/2010 10:55:32 AM , Rating: 4
what?

the textbook market is a mirror image of the pharmaceutical market?

SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!


RE: lolwut
By MrBlastman on 6/3/2010 2:31:09 PM , Rating: 3
I call that going by the book. har har. :)


RE: lolwut
By clovell on 6/3/2010 2:56:56 PM , Rating: 2
It's not. On-patent generic manufacturing isn't the exact same product as name-brand manufacturing. Stabilities are different, shelf lives are different, contents are different, and pharmacokinetics are different.

Some of the time, these aren't so different as to erode your point (which is a good one), I just don't want folks thinking these are exactly the same.


RE: lolwut
By pattycake0147 on 6/4/2010 11:08:48 PM , Rating: 2
Yup. Going into my senior year now. International Editions on Amazon are the way to go. Sell them back the next semester. Since I started going that route I haven't spent more than $300 in a semester.


great
By zmatt on 6/3/2010 10:55:38 AM , Rating: 5
College text books are a racket. The prices they charge and the frequency of updates is absurd. I welcome anything that can make it easier on the students.




RE: great
By Adonlude on 6/3/2010 1:04:08 PM , Rating: 4
Hell, some college educations are a racket. Some of the majors are so worthless that you are basically spending tens of thousands of dollars just to become a homeless person in 4-6 years with no job and a degree.


What about
By supermitsuba on 6/3/2010 10:39:12 AM , Rating: 2
textbooks that seem to change every 2 years. It sucked cause the professor would say "YOU MUST" have this book, and there was just typo fixes in it. Also, I would be interested to see how prices are compared to used book stores.




RE: What about
By inperfectdarkness on 6/3/2010 10:53:36 AM , Rating: 2
"it is imperative that you attend every lecture, or you shall be lost.

it is imperative that you hover on my every word, or you shall be lost.

it is imperative that you buy my book...or you shall be so lost as you will never be found again."


RE: What about
By Solandri on 6/3/2010 9:13:58 PM , Rating: 2
One of my profs was pretty cool about this. He found an out of print textbook with the material he wanted to teach, authored by a colleague of his. He contacted said colleague and got permission to copy the book. He then had his secretary run down to the school's copy center and run off copies for all the students in the class. The copies were made at administrative rates, so it ended up costing us like $1.25 each.


RE: What about
By bigdawg1988 on 6/3/2010 9:23:54 PM , Rating: 2
Lucky guy, and kudos to your prof! Finally, an honest man is found!


How to make a buck
By brshoemak on 6/3/2010 12:23:06 PM , Rating: 2
At Purdue a number of the books I used were actually written by the professors. Like others said a new version was released every couple years with very little new content (read: money grab).

The big thing when I was in school was the supplementary workbook/textbook. You would buy the normal textbook, then you were required to purchase 3-4 "supplementary workbooks" written by a professor. That way, even if a professor didn't have a published textbook they could still get in on the cash grab by selling 45-50 page binded copies of what amounted to class notes for $50-60 per workbook.




RE: How to make a buck
By JediJeb on 6/3/2010 12:58:53 PM , Rating: 2
Or do what we did, one person in the class buys the textbook and everyone shares it. Promotes study groups and when splitting the cost over 5-10 people it really helps. I even had one professor suggest it to the class just because of the high price on the books.


An easy problem to fix
By intelpatriot on 6/3/2010 12:32:38 PM , Rating: 2
Just shrink wrap the books with a EULA forbidding resale.

If there's some commie law forbidding this for books just bundle a dvd with the book.




By inperfectdarkness on 6/3/2010 1:07:43 PM , Rating: 2
well i'm sure book publishers would LOVE to have books which require steam client for their textbooks. nothing is more prohibitive of resale than F^^king steam.

i would love for a crackdown on DRM's which prevent resale.


textbooks are such a scam
By ZachDontScare on 6/3/2010 2:16:48 PM , Rating: 2
What a great scam textbooks are. You've got a nice, captured audience and can basically charge what you want.

I hope this book rental thing works out. Though my concern would be that textbook mfg's will just start tweaking editions more frequently.

What really needs to be available are 'open source' style textbooks for the most common classes. I know a lot of prof's already make their own.




RE: textbooks are such a scam
By jimhsu on 6/3/2010 2:27:03 PM , Rating: 2
You mean like http://openwetware.org/ ?

There's a reason there's no textbook for synthetic biology - there won't be a market, it'll be outdated in a few months, and no one will use it anyways.


textbook sites comparison
By maxumer on 6/4/2010 8:43:44 AM , Rating: 2
i tried posting a relevant comment but it keeps telling me it's spam. i edited and re edited it but it kept rejecting me. any ideas on how to fight over aggressive filters?




RE: textbook sites comparison
By maxumer on 6/4/2010 8:45:26 AM , Rating: 2
Cheapism did a pretty long review and comparison of textbook websites and they recommend Chegg as their top choice. They also diss a few sites.


um...
By inperfectdarkness on 6/3/2010 10:35:12 AM , Rating: 2
is it book renter or book center? i'm confused.




excuses
By digitalreflex on 6/3/2010 12:27:44 PM , Rating: 2
The last excuse I heard trying to justify the high price of the books, they were laying blame on the used book market. Give me a break. It's not like the used game market caused video game prices to increase.




Amazon used books?
By nafhan on 6/3/2010 1:54:16 PM , Rating: 2
I did pretty well buying and reselling on Amazon. I was able to keep textbook costs around $100 total per semester (4 or 5 classes a semester) by purchasing used and reselling once the class was over. On the rare occassion I had to buy a book new, it tended to balance out somewhat by having a higher resale value.
Also, a lot of instructors these days are including alternate page numbers and problem sets for older versions of the textbooks, since there is often very little difference.




Scam?
By clovell on 6/3/2010 2:53:27 PM , Rating: 2
One thing you gotta realize about college-level texts is that the market is smaller for them than it is for high school & Elementary school texts.

This is especially true of graduate-level texts that sell for astronomical prices.

My college used a textbook rental system exclusively, and I have to say it rocked. This is a great idea. At the same time - if you go to grad school, there's a better chance that you'll want to hang onto your books, so it's probably better to buy them - even if you do it on half.com.




By Bridget Rome on 6/11/2010 1:47:10 AM , Rating: 2
I currently attend the University of Texas at Austin and this year marks the launch of the textbook rental option at our campus bookstore (Co-op).

After only the first semester of freshman year, I completely converted to online renting, buying, and selling. Ever since, I have saved as much as $400 on my book costs per semester.

The best site I have come across was Rentscouter which features: BookRenter, Chegg, CampusBookRental, etc.

I am interested to see how the co-op's book rental prices will compare to the online rental prices featured on Rentscouter.




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