College students who choose to study in the U.S. including domestic and international students pay thousands of dollars for tuition and campus fees. But as we all know, the student bill is not the only one that students need to pay to study in college.
On top of the tuition and fees, college students need to spend hundreds to purchase textbooks (Oh, and international students pay extra $$$ for flight tickets!). College textbooks are notorious for expensive sticker prices. What is more, some textbooks are worth buying but some textbooks are not, especially if they are not for your major.
For these reasons, many college students choose a smarter and cost-saving way to study which is finding textbook rental services that meet their needs. As the new semester is coming up, this blog post will introduce various textbook rental services that range from the most traditional way of renting textbooks to the newest textbook rental model.
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Contents
College book store
The most traditional way of purchasing a textbook is to go to the college book store on your campus. Depending on the book store, you will find new and used textbooks as well as textbook buyback options.
What is textbook buyback? It means that the book store would buy textbooks from you at the end of the semester. If you maintain your textbook like a new one throughout the semester, you will be paid higher. Otherwise, you will be given fewer dollars.
Unless you are determined to not make a note or highlight anything (which is not recommended of course- you gotta study!), though, it’s uncertain how much your textbook will be worth when you try to re-sell them to the college book store. Therefore the idea of the textbook buyback is the same as a textbook rental from the view that you only use the textbook for a semester but there are more uncertainties.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 1. The location is convenient. | 1. The price point is not the cheapest. |
| 2. You can find almost every textbook from the college book store. | 2. Used books or buyback options can be easily sold out. |
| 3. Textbook buyback- The resell price is undecided. | |
| 4. Depending on the college book store, textbook rental extension and buyout options are not available. | |
| 5. Depending on the college book store, e-books are not available. |
Instead, you may want to check out various social media groups like Facebook pages to buy and sell textbooks. As those groups are only open to your college and university students, you can verify the identity of sellers and buyers. However, if you have a personality that doesn’t like negotiating prices, you may not enjoy the reselling process as there are students who use various tactics to lower the price.
For students who can relate to any of the following, check out online textbook rental services in the next paragraph:
- I would like to save more on textbooks.
- I don’t want to spend my energy on going through the reselling process.
- I would like to minimize being in public.
- I prefer buying/renting e-books.
- I am not sure if I need to buy or rent a book.
Amazon Textbooks Store
For college students who would like to save more, don’t forget to check out Amazon Rentals or Amazon eTextbook Rentals. As you can see in the comparison chart below, students can save up to 93% by renting from Amazon Rentals or Amazon eTextbook Rentals. Click the “Shop now‘ button to see if they have your textbooks. Pros and Cons of renting textbooks from Amazon are listed below.
| Textbook title and list price | ||||
| Rental price | $19.99 | N/A at this moment | $27.55 | N/A at this moment |
| eTextbook (rental) | $54.98 | $11.03 | $24 | $45.96 |
| Textbook title and list price | ||||
| Rental price | $22.48 | $35.24 | $75.99 | $14.51 |
| eTextbook (rental) | $39.33 | $32.34 | $40 | $32.15 |
One of the greatest advantages of renting from Amazon Rentals is that students have lots of flexibility– you can extend the rental, cancel the rental, and buy the textbook if you really liked the book. However, as I noted in the “Cons,” not all textbooks are available for rental. If you cannot find books that you are looking for, check out the Chegg Books that I am going to introduce in the following paragraph.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 1. 30 days of the free return window | 1. Some books are not available for textbook rental. |
| 2. Free 2-day shipping with Prime Student (Students can enjoy the free trial with a school email address) | 2. Some e-books can be only delivered to Kindle (Amazon’s ebook reader). |
| 3. Extension options available even after the due date | 3. Supplementary materials like CDs or codes are not guaranteed for textbook rental. |
| 4. Free return shipping with the pre-paid return shipping label | 4. When you rent a physical textbook, minimum notes and highlights are encouraged. |
| 5. Students can highlight and take notes on their ebooks even if they rented them. | |
| 6. Students can find rent, buy-used, buy-new, ebook options on one page | |
| 7. Some ebooks provide digital flashcards. | |
| 8. Flexible textbook rental periods: Students can rent certain books on a monthly basis or for 30, 60, or 90 days. | |
| 9. If you want to keep a book, 100% of the rental fee will be deducted from the list price (you only need to pay “list price” minus “rental fee”). | |
| 10. Reaching out to Customer Service is easy (chat available). |
Chegg Books
Chegg is one of the first pioneers in textbook rental businesses in the U.S. Chegg started as a textbook rental platform but it has constantly extended its services to Chegg Study and Chegg Writing and now it is one of the solid Education Technology companies in the U.S.
To learn more about their other services- Chegg Study and Chegg Writing – click the following articles below:
Related blog post 1: Straight-A study guide: study in the USA for international students
Related blog post 2: Plagiarism? Writing services that all international students should know
Circling back to the textbook rental services, Chegg Books offers pretty much similar textbook rental services as Amazon Rentals or Amazon eTextbook Rentals. But one big advantage that you don’t want to miss is that Chegg Books rental comes with the 4 weeks free trial of Chegg Study!
This means that students can enjoy the full feature of homework assistance -ask the expert 24/7 and take a photo to ask questions- for free for a month! As the subscription fee for Chegg Study is $14.95 per month, college students can save around $60 by renting a book or e-book from Chegg Books.
Plus, Chegg Study can help you to achieve higher grades, and potentially you can be eligible for GPA-based scholarships from your school. Details of the Chegg Books textbook rental services are outline in the table below:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 1. Good price point: Some textbooks are around 90% off the list price. | 1. As you are renting a book, you can’t use it as if no one is going to look at the book later. |
| 2. 21-day risk-free returns: Didn’t like the class after the first lecture? Chegg Books users can return the physical books at any time within the 21-day window. | |
| 3. 4 weeks free trial of Chegg Study | |
| 4. Keep the book: If you really liked the book to the point you don’t want to return it, you can always purchase the rental. | |
| 5. Extend the rental: If you need to re-take the course for whatever reason, you can extend the rental. | |
| 6. Free return fee: Return fee is on Chegg Books. All you need to do is keep the pre-paid shipping label that comes with the book and use the label to ship it back. | |
| 7. E-Textbook: You will find a wide range of ebook options. | |
| 8. Reaching out to Customer Service is easy (chat available). |
Pearson+
Pearson is well known publishing company in the United States. You may have at least one textbook that is published from Pearson. As the demand for e-book has increased a lot, Pearson recently launched it’s subscription based e-book platform, Pearson+.
Pearson+ has two subscription plans- single and multi. Students with Single plan can access to one textbook. Therefore, if you are required to buy a book that is published from Pearson, the rental fee can be calculated somewhere around $40 for a semester ($9.99 per month * 4 months).
If you have more than one book to buy or rent from Pearson, you may want to go with Multi plan ($14.99 per month, $60 per semester) to have access to 1,500+ textbooks and save more.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| 1. You can access textbooks through a Pearson+ mobile app even offline. | 1. Available textbooks are limited to Pearson-published books. |
| 2. Students can add notes and highlights on e-books. | 2. Both memberships (Single and Multi) requires a 4-month commitment. |
| 3. Students can access to the textbook with up to 3 devices. | 3. The Single plan only allows you to access 1 textbook. |
This blog post introduces at various ways to buy and/or rent textbooks for college students who attend colleges and universities in the United States. As students spend 2~4 years in the college, small amount of money that students save on textbooks for each semester will add up to the significant amount when you look back.
All other life/study hacks for college students that include Straight-A guide and how to ace at writing can be found in the this page.
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