There is a new way to get textbooks for class without paying high prices at the bookstores: Rent textbooks, and save up to 80 percent compared to the price at bookstores.
Students can go online at www.chegg.com and search for the book they need by author, title or the ISBN.
According to www.chegg.com, the length of the rental book for a quarter is 85 days from the original order date. However, Chegg offers students the availability of extending their rental period for an extra fee if needed.
“We offer a 15 day and a 30 day extension,” said Maria Reiling, vice president of marketing for Chegg. “You can extend for a full term at a 25 percent discount off of what it cost the first time.”
Chegg has over two million book titles available in a warehouse located in Santa Barbara, Calif., giving the students the availability of renting the textbooks they need.
Geoff Hach, a junior in electrical engineering, said the service is appealing.
“I would consider it,” Hach said. “It would save me money on textbooks. For the GEC, it would be really great to return the books instead of keeping them.”
Chegg does not have a set number of each title, but they have never run out of textbooks to rent to students.
“We have not run out of books to give to students,” Reiling said. “If a student wants a book and we don’t have it, we will go look on the Web to see if we can get it. It may not work with every book, but we make an effort to keep books that are important to have.”
If a student decides that he or she wants to keep the book instead of sending the book back, he or she can pay full price for the book depending on its replacement cost.
“It’s the replacement cost minus the rental cost that you have already paid,” Reiling said. “If we could get a quality used book, then that is the replacement cost.”
Students can highlight in the book to a certain extent, but writing in the textbook is not allowed. A student cannot highlight the entire book and return the book back to Chegg. If the textbook is not in a condition to be re-used, the student will be charged full price for the textbook to replace it.
“We did a survey and we found that 78 percent of the students say they actually like the books with some highlighting,” Reiling said. “Highlighting is fine, but we also want to make sure the books are in a condition that people can and want to use.”
Reiling said that Chegg is considering accepting school IDs to pay for the rented textbooks needed for class.
“We would like to include that in the future (accepting school IDs) as we continue to make the site easy for students to use,” Reiling said.
Chegg has partnered up with Eco-Libris to help the improvement of the environment. With every book that Chegg rents out, they will plant a tree.
“We have planted trees in South and Central America and Africa,” Reiling said. “We try to plant them in places where textbooks publishers are getting their resources to produce their textbooks. By the end of May, we will have planted 100 football fields worth of trees.”
To return the book after the quarter, the student can print out the pre-paid return label and drop the package off at the post office.
Will Toman can be reached at [email protected].
