I dealt with the textbook rental issue this past semester. It really isn't as good a deal in many cases as the article makes it out to be. First, textbook manufacturers at the college level are churning out a new version about every 3 years. So the costs of buying the books is more expensive for Chegg than buying DVDs is for Netflix. The books have a shorter shelf life.

Second, students who only compare the upfront costs of buying vs. renting the hard cover editions are possibly not making an accurate comparison. For example, Chegg will charge a student $84 to rent the book that I use in the course that I teach. The course is a required course and all the professors who teach it use the same book. The textbook has only been out since Jan. 2009. If a student brought a brand new hard cover copy at the bookstore or Amazon, they would spend $150 but the book would come with access to a range of online study aids (chapter outlines, practice quizes, etc.) that they won't get from Chegg. They also would be able to sell it to another student or to Chegg at the end of the semester. Chegg will pay $87 if the book is in "Good" condition. (We will probably being using the same book for at least the next few years.) So a student who brought a new book for $150 and resold it for $87 at the end of the semester would be out only $63, instead of $84 to Chegg, plus they would have had access to the online study aids which might help improve their grade. If they rent the book from Chegg but still wanted access to the online study aids, they would have to pay the publisher $60 for such access. So they would be out $148 if they went that route rather than $63 if they brought the hard cover from the publisher.

Another way that some publishers are making renting uneconomical is by offering loose leaf editions. The publisher of the textbook I use offers students the option through the university to buy a loose leaf version for $80 but at this price point it doesn't come with access to the online materials. Alternatively, the students can get the loose leaf edition and the online study aids through the university for $120. So if students buy just the loose leaf edition, they will have saved at least $4 to begin with and can resell the loose leaf edition to another student at the end of the semester for probably between $20-40. If they get the loose leaf book bundled with access to the online materials, they saved $24 over what they would have spent to rent the book from Chegg and then buy access to the online materials from the publisher, and again they can resell the loose leaf version for something if it is in good condition at the end of the semester.

Another possibly lower cost alternative to Chegg is for students to download individual chapters of a textbook from the publisher if they are only going to be assigned a portion of the book for class. With textbook I use, students can access an electronic version from the publisher for $94 or access individual chapters from the publisher for $6.50. If a professor only assigned 11 or fewer chapters from the book (I assign more than this - so this won't work for my class), then it would be cheaper for a student to download only the chapters that they need rather than renting the book from Chegg. Again these electronic versions don't come with access to the online electronic study aids. So if a student buys a used book, rents a book from Chegg, or buys all or part of the electronic version of the book from the publisher, they will have to pay the publisher an additional $60 to access the online study aids. As with renting the book, students who access the electronic version of the book will not have something that they can resell at the end of the semester to defray some of their costs.

Chegg and similiar services may only have a narrow window of time in which to operate if the price for downloading books or chapters drops and demand for such downloads grows significantly. Kindle has come out with a new version designed to make it easier to read downloaded textbooks and it enables users to highlight text and insert comments just as they would have done with a hard copy.

If Chegg is basing their model on Netflix then they need to be thinking about how they are going to convince publishers to let them in on the market for downloadable textbooks. Netflix is already adapting its business model away from renting DVDs to providing downloadable movies. Movie studios have an incentive to let Netflix do this because Netflix has such a large segment of the movie renting audience. So that if their movies aren't available for rent through Netflix, people might not bother to seek out the studio's site to rent a particular film, if they can easily find an alternative on Netflix. Textbook publishers don't have the same incentives. Students are required to buy specific books. So students who prefer to download books or chapters of books will seek out the publishers' sites if that is the only place from which they can download the materials.

Thanks for those insights. I think they show not only that the textbook business is evolving, but also that technology is having a tremendous impact on that evolution. And you also make some great points about the issues that Chegg and other online book rental entities should be considering to ensure that their business model remains a viable one.

This concept of renting textbooks is interesting, but I usually just prefer to keep my textbooks for reference later in life. Still however, I don't want to pay retail prices for them so that is why I use http://www.bigwords.com They don't actually sell any books; they are a textbook search engine. Using them I have always found better prices there than my campus bookstore.

I still find buying your textbooks to be cheaper and easier, plus sometimes i like to be able to look back at my textbooks to remember something. It's always smarter to buy online, I use www.cheapesttextbooks.com.

Check out this site www.bookase.com, A price comparison search engine for books and textbooks. It searches for the lowest prices among the major online stores worldwide and also offers discount coupons. You can also choose among various shipping options to calculate the lowest price

Check out this site www.bookase.com, A price comparison search engine for books and textbooks. It searches for the lowest prices among the major online stores worldwide and also offers discount coupons. You can also choose among various shipping options to calculate the lowest price

I would suggest using GreenTextbooks.org
Save Money, Save The Planet

GreenTextbooks.org specializes in the recycling of textbooks, DVDs, CDs. Buying used textbooks not only saves you money, but cuts down on greenhouse gases caused by the manufacturing of new textbooks.
With GreenTextbooks.org you're not only saving trees, you are saving some green. http://www.GreenTextbooks.org