Any college student knows how incredibly expensive textbooks can be. If you’re looking for ways to reduce the pain and outlay for pricey schoolbooks, then you’ve probably heard about texbook rentals. These services allow you to purchase the book at a reduced price for a certain period of time, then return it when finished. One of the first and most famous of these is Campus Book Rentals, which was founded in 2007 and has been mentioned in outlets such as The New York Times and CNN. They aim to offer books at 40-90% off bookstore prices, with free shipping both ways – just log on to their website, pick the book you need, and select the length of time which you’d like to rent it for. The book will arrive in the mail with a pre-paid shipping envelope, so when you’re all done all you have to do is pop it in the mailbox – check out the video above for an overview of the service.
So the big question is, will you really save money this way? Here’s an example of one of the books they carry, “The Elements of Moral Philosophy by Rachels, James and Rachels, Stuart”, an ethics textbook. The original price is listed as $50, with the Campus Book Rentals price listed as low as $23.61 for a 55-day rental period. Now, I’m not in college, so I really can’t speak from personal experience as to how this stacks up or if it would be cheaper/better to buy your book used. As with everything, I would highly recommend doing comparisons and research before committing to your book. If it were me, I would absolutely look at a rental site during my price comparisons to see what kind of prices it offered on what I needed; and since Campus Book Rentals appears to be very well established, it seems like a good place to start. Campus Book Rentals also donates a portion of each book rental to Operation Smile, an organization that provides free surgeries to children across the world with conditions such as cleft palate.
Have you ever rented a college textbook? Did you save money?
We looked into it after my son’s first semester books tallied up to $750. I couldn’t even believe it and the thing is that the teachers never even gave assignments out of two of them. TICKED! So far, we’ve never found any of the books he’s needed but I think it would be easier for general ed credits. He’s too far into his specialized major now.
Oh man that’s obnoxious Liz! If they require you buy something, they should be required to actually use it!
i had that same problem with textbooks too frequently, liz. or they’d require a shrink wrapped 3 pack and use one book- but you had to return it in shrink wrap. stupid.
i have a sister who is 52 and in college and her daughter who i 19 in college i will share this site with them!
During Nursing School I paid more for the books than I did for the tuition. Most of the books we used once or twice, it would have been great to have a service like this back then.
Holy cow, Mellisa! Books more expensive than tuition!!
I saved SO. MUCH. MONEY. by renting my books! I literally would get an entire semester’s worth of rentals for the price of ONE {of SIX} books. Love it!
My sister is in college and she rents her books instead of buying! She actually saves a lot of money that way!
I have never used this site but would so look into it and tell others about it. Text books are expensive!
I’ve never rented them because I always wonder if I’ll want to keep it later. I did try and buy them as cheap as I could though. However, looking back, a service like this would have saved me money and a lot of hassle. I still have college books I don’t know what to do with. :/
my nephew just spent $700 on books. And he is in HIGH SCHOOL! This is going to save ppl a lot of money!