Why Buy Textbooks When You Can Rent Textbooks?

Textbook rental companies are one of the fastest growing market segments in the country.  The reasons are simple and I will explain them in this blog. 

I’ve talked with thousands of college students across this great country of ours.  I have a daughter in college; my wife is about to finish her Masters degree and runs the museum (Wrather West Kentucky Museum) on Murray State University’s campus and I work for a company that operates the third largest textbook rental company, College Book Renter.  Until the last couple of years, students have had limited options for acquiring their course materials.  When it came to books, they had only three choices, buy new, used or try to pass without a book at all.  At the end of the semester, the only happy students I met while selling back their books, where the ones that never used them, didn’t go to class and needed the cash to party.

I’ve met some students who got pretty angry when they were trying to sell books back to their bookstore only to find the store was not buying them back for several reasons.  Maybe the book has gone “old edition” or the professor had not turned in his adoptions for the coming semester.

When the bookstore is going to need your book for the next semester they will pay around one half of the list price providing it is acceptable condition.  If the store doesn’t need your book but it can be used at another school you will receive a lesser price depending on how old it is.  This is why the textbook rental market has sky-rocketed.  You save up to 85% of the purchase price and eliminate the guess work at the end of the semester.  Just return it to the rightful owner.

If you’ve done your due diligence, you will know that sometimes the out of pocket expense can be less by purchasing and selling back if you’re willing to take the risk.  If you’re like most students and have other bills to pay, you will most likely want to save on the frontend and not take the gamble of losing all of your investment.

When you factor in everything, all in all, it's almost always better to rent than to buy when it comes to textbooks.