College books for rent
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090813/ap_on_re_us/us_college_textbook_rentals
Finally something that sounds like a win-win for students and publishers alike. An company is going to start providing textbooks for rent to college students at huge discounts.
Obviously this is great for students. Speaking from my own experience, textbook can run close to or over $100 on average. I’m referring mostly to the books I had to purchase in community college. By the time I went on to Portland State, I was an english major so I didn’t have to buy textbooks anymore. It was mostly novels and anthologies so they ran anywhere between $5 and $40. Plus I could get a lot of them used at Powells. Anyways, my associates degree was very expensive to get because of all the books I need. Even trading them in I barely got 25% back. A lot of the times there was new versions so the one I had bought could not be bought back. This company is saying they are offering books at 40-70% off. That is so much less than I ended up paying total for my books. It would have saved me hundreds of dollars a semester. Heck, I probably could have paid for my whole first semmester at PSU with the money I saved.
The reason why this would benefit book publishers is because they can continue to make money off of books. Correct me if I am wrong, but when the school stores buy back than later sale books, the markup does not go to the publisher. Even if the book is only used for one year, say four semmesters, they would be making a profit each time it is rented. That has to be more than just the profit they make the very first time.
Look at it this way, say the book cost $100 if the student just buys it. If it is rented at even the whole 70% off that is still $30 a semmester. That would be $120 made total over the year. If they do it even at 50% off it would become a total of $200 made. Students save $50 and the companies make an extra $100. Makes perfect sense to me.
Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think it is the future of college textbooks?
I think it’s a good idea if they do it right. One of the issues I can see will be condition of the books. Most college texts get some really good use, and people who rent out things like to get their stuff back in pristine condition. That just won’t happen, so they better have rental terms that allow for real world use, or it won’t take off.
That is a good point. I’ve always kept my books like new so I forget other people tend to beat them up.