The popcorn is spinning in the microwave and your friends have made themselves comfortable on the couches in the dorm lounge. You walk to the mailbox for that Netflix movie you rented, but instead of this summer’s blockbuster, you find a rental copy of that Calculus 101 textbook you need.
The online marketplace Chegg.com is offering rental textbooks through a service called Textbookflix.com, which allows students to rent and return textbooks according to their schedules.
Chegg.com was created in 2003 as the brainchild of friends and recent Iowa State University graduates Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra. Phumbhra and Rashid initially experimented with a rental service in the past year and received an “enormous response” from students nationally.
“We were always looking for new ways to save money and Chegg started as a money-saving tool for students,” Phumbhra said. “Our concentration has been the biggest in textbooks since that’s where students spend the most amount of money.”
With more than 2 million used books available, Textbookflix.com is another option for students like Lauren Virnoche, who said she always compares prices when shopping for books and tries taking some out of the library.
“I would definitely give it a try,” said the Communication sophomore and a former Daily staffer, who said she is taking six classes this fall and spent more than $100 on her first two textbooks, both for the same class.
The site allows students to rent textbooks at a cost of up to 65 percent below the retail price. Students can search for books by ISBN, title or author. Phumbhra and Rashid said they are aware of the problems many students encounter when trying to sell back their books at the end of the quarter, and their site responds to it.
“The books expire and it’s very hard – you end up spending $150 on a book and getting $10 dollars back,” Phumbhra said. “With (Textbookflix.com), students can just send the book back, so there are no lines and they don’t have to pay for shipping at the end of the semester.”
Books ordered from Textbookflix.com arrive with a prepaid shipping label that allows students to send back books if they switch classes, or if they need to cancel or return their books. They offer expedited shipping options, which get books to their destinations in about three to five business days, Phumbhra said.
Virnoche said that for some classes she would prefer to keep the books she bought, but for large lectures or distribution requirements she would rather receive a full refund.
“I would have been thrilled to rent the book for a class like Introduction to Psychology,” said Virnoche, of the class she took last year.
Other students were dubious about renting textbooks, mainly because they preferred to keep some of the books they bought. Communication junior Jeremy Goodman, who majors in Radio/TV/Film, paid almost $300 for 13 books, but said he has little incentive to sell them back.
“I have a lot of very specific books for my major that I would rather keep than sell back,” Goodman said.
Phumbhra said if students prefer, they can pay the difference between the rental and retail prices to buy the book at the end of the quarter.
In order to obtain a wide variety of textbooks, Phumbhra said he and Rashid own most of the books and buy others directly. If a book is out of stock, he said they can send for another copy quickly through their networks.
In the meantime, Virnoche said she understands that textbooks are a necessary part of college life and is open to other options that let her buy books at a discount.
“I don’t know how I’m going to buy my other books, but it’s just something you have to do,” Virnoche said. “You have to get your books.”
Reach Corinne Lestch at [email protected].
