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Renting college textbooks 101: back to school savings
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Have you ever considered renting textbooks instead of buying them? What about downloading a book?
Renting or downloading textbooks can save a lot of money. For example, my son’s Calculus book is listed at over $200 on his college bookstore’s website. He could rent the same book for a semester for about $59.
The popularity of a recent article about buying textbooks online indicates that overstrapped college students are definitely interested in saving money.
“The concept of renting textbooks is simple,” said Ashley Goode of BookRenter.com. 
“You choose the book that you need from more than a million titles, rent it for a fraction of the cost, and have it delivered to your doorstep in as little as 1-2 business days”
Goode explained that after the rental period is over, “you just send the textbook back with a pre-paid shipping label provided by BookRenter.”
The idea of making textbooks truly affordable came from Colin Barceloux, a former college student who founded BookRenter in 2006.
“It
was an effort to help others avoid the poor business ethics and
outrageous pricing he experienced at local bookstores when he was in
college,” said Goode.
Other companies offer rental books, too. To compare buying a book with renting it, you can go to Campusbooks.com, or Bigwords.com.
Both of these websites allow you to shop among online bookstores, as
they list the choices of purchase and/or rental prices.
Downloading
books is also becoming somewhat popular. However, proceed with caution
when choosing this option, as you may be violating copyright laws.
For
example, a reader sent me a website started by a student who plans to
scan her textbooks and allow other students to download the books for
free. This could create a serious legal mess if it is done without the
author’s permission. These issues are similar to those created when students download music for free.
A website that offers comparisons of rentals and downloaded books is called DontBuyTextbooks.Net.
Of
course, there are some books that you would want to purchase instead of
rent, such as thoe that you want to save as reference if they are
directly relevant to your field of study.
For more information, see:
Buying textbooks online 101: save money
College student ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading 30 songs
Related Articles:
Comments
www.BookDealFinder.com
I use it every semester for my textbooks!
www.DontBuyTextbooks.Net
Check it out
www.DontBuyItTextbooks.Net
It has all of the rental and text download companies in one site. Easier to find the best deals and get everything over with at one time.
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