Renting Is the New Buying
Ever think about renting textbooks versus buying them? Services are popping up all over the internet offering all your textbooks on a rental basis. Most sites allow users to rent the textbooks on a 60-day, quarterly (~85 days) or per semester (~125 days) basis.
The most popular service with the cleanest and simplest interface is Chegg.com. You simply type in the ISBN number for the book you are looking for, and it shows you the rates for different time periods. Users can even request additional rental days when initially renting the book. The book ships to you via your choice of speeds and you return them through UPS for free. Customers have the option to purchase the textbook, and with every rental, Chegg plants a tree.
I tried a few of my textbooks from this semester to see how the prices compare. For a Computer Security book I bought used at the Penn State Bookstore for $78.00, the same book could be rented for $41.99 without shipping. Given the changing pace of computer security technology, a lot of the content in the textbook will be outdated in a few years. As a result, had I known about textbook rentals at the beginning of the semester, I definitely would have sprung for the rental.
Obviously, it may not be cost effective to rent a textbook that you may want to hold onto after graduation. I would encourage you to do some shopping around to see your different options.
The following are some resources for textbook as you begin to think about how you’re going to deal with purchasing next semester’s textbooks:
- Chegg.com – Textbook Rental Service
- Bookrenter – Another Popular Rental Service
- PSU Book Exchange – Penn State’s Official Book Exchange (Penn State ID required)
- Craigslist – The Link Takes You To The State College Book Section
- Amazon.com Textbook Section – Buy and Sell Textbooks (Check out the sell-back portion of the website, you may be able to get more money back from Amazon than you would selling it back to the Penn State Bookstore)
- Facebook Marketplace – This link might not work for some of you, but you can find it manually by specifying State College in the search bar when you navigate to the marketplace
.
Your ad blocker is on.
Please choose an option below.
Purchase a Subscription!
About the Author
Penn State Board Of Trustees Approves 2025-26 Fiscal Budget
The budget features increases between 1-4% for tuition, housing, and food for most students.
OS Reviews: Penn State In College Football 25
Whether our staffers loved playing in Beaver Stadium or beating Ohio State, here’s how they found the newest EA Sports game.
Reintroducing Onward State’s Penn State Football Student Ticket Exchange
Whether you’re trying to offload a ticket you don’t want or making sure you get to sit with your friends, Onward State’s ticket exchange is here to help.
Question of the Day: Sweet Mobile Apps
AT&T is sponsoring a pretty cool competition in which entrants can win $10,000 cash in scholarship money for creating a mobile device application. Teams of up to four people can enter a custom-built application for the purpose of e-learning. The rules state that the “innovating e-learning mobile app” should be functional across multiple platforms. Submissions are due by September 15, 2010 and so far there are only ten teams signed up. So my question for you is: