USA Today recently published an article on how textbook rentals are saving the college textbook store. The article opens by saying “The nation’s brick-and-mortar college bookstores have been struggling to compete with online retailers. Their answer to e-books is an alliance with former rivals: textbook rental companies, such as CampusBookRentals.com,a major driver of the movement that offers kiosks within stores themselves.”

Now I can see where students drawn to shop at their college bookstore would opt for the option to rent textbooks. Rental textbooks may be higher that buying used and reselling but the upfront cost is lower on rentals. This lower “what I need to spend today” is very attractive to students.

I am not sure if the addition of textbook rentals will do much to compete with online sellers or e-books as the article claims. For those comfortable using online sourcing it will most likely still be cheaper than the bookstore. For e-books there is so much difference besides the price that I don’t think it is a valid comparison.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic by leaving a comment.

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