Rental sites ease burden of heavy textbook costs

The cost of Trish Rogerson's biology class and lab at Tidewater Community College: $454.

The required textbook and manual, packaged with a CD and other add-ons: $396.

"I couldn't believe that the textbook cost about as much as the class," Rogerson said.

She scoured the Internet for deals and discovered one - $128 for renting the book and lab manual; her professor said the rest of the package wasn't necessary.

"It just made sense to rent," Rogerson said.

An increasing number of college students say they are saving money - and aggravation - by renting their books. By renting, students avoid the end-of-semester headaches of being stuck with books they'll never use again and might not be able to resell.

Colin Barceloux started bookrenter.com two years ago, born from the frustrations he had as a student at Santa Clara University in California. After spending thousands on books, he said he realized, "Buying a book, then trying to sell it back is really only an inefficient rental."

His idea caught on, and his site now has more than 100,000 customers attending more than 3,000 campuses.

College bookstores are joining the number of textbook rental Web sites, such as chegg.com, dontbuytextbooks.net and collegebookrenter.com, which offer rentals for a quarter, semester or a year, at varying prices and shipping options.

The University of Virginia is entering its third year of renting, in addition to selling used and new books, and some digital downloads. The bookstore began by renting 15 titles and now offers 125. It targets classes with the largest enrollments where one or two expensive textbooks are being used, such as many first-year courses.

Jon Kates, executive director of the U.Va. bookstore, said in an e-mail that rentals are discounted 55 to 75 percent of the new book price, while used books run about 25 to 40 percent off.

"We shared our students' frustration with the high price of textbooks," Kates said. "As U.Va.'s owned and operated bookstore, we felt a strong responsibility to do something about it."

The National Association of College Stores estimates students spent an average of $702 last year on required course materials, the bulk of that being textbooks.

The majority of books are still sold through college stores or their online sites, but the share of online stores, including rental sites, is growing, said Charles Schmidt, director of public relations for the NACS.

If students are going to rent, they should do so through college stores, he said. His organization issues a "buyer-beware" warning when it comes to rental sites. He said students and parents need to read the fine print on refund policies should the site send the wrong book or if the student drops the class. Rental companies also might charge for writing or highlighting in the books.

"Sometimes it's not as cheap as it appears to be," Schmidt said.

Eric Tyler, who recently graduated from St. Leo University, which has several centers in Hampton Roads, said he used to buy all of his books at the campus store because he didn't know any better.

Then, he learned about online renting and got 60 to 70 percent of his textbooks that way. He said almost all of the books were new, and the service offers different shipping options, including next day, if he procrastinated. Return shipping fees were included and he only had to have the books postmarked for return by a deadline. He also had the option of buying the books if he wanted to keep them. The bottom line was always the most important thing, he said:

"Over the past three years, I probably saved $2,500 to $3,000."

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com