Education in San Antonio

It is a familiar site: A line of students, seemingly six miles long, stretching around the university book store. Everyone clutches a list of their class section numbers and strains to see where the needed books shelved. Each face is lined with anxiety. “Will there be enough books?” they are thinking. “Couldn’t I just get this from the campus library?” Along side some of the Freshmen, parents also strain eagerly–in their case, it’s to see the poorly printed price tags on the shelves. “$163 for a biology book? Looks like it’s time for a second job.” At the end of the semester, everyone lines up at the university bookstore again, this time to sell back their books. With luck, they will get enough cash to buy a burger.

Once, the campus bookstore was the only outlet that sold textbooks, and they charged accordingly. When the time came to buy back the books, the store paid a paltry sum. After all, there was no where else for students to unload their texts. The cycle was completed at the beginning of the next semester, when the store sold the used books once again to new students at “discounted” prices.

Fortunately, this model is changing. The campus bookstore’s monopoly is no longer safe. Today’s students now have the ability of buy and sell textbooks online. In a completely new twist, students also have a new option: they can rent used textbooks through several prominent websites.

Clearly, the biggest winners in this brave new world are the students. Instead of being forced to purchase items at ridiculous prices, they can harness the power of the free market to find suppliers who’s prices reflect the title’s true level of supply and demand. By choosing to rent used textbooks online, students can further reduce their costs, provided they are willing to return the books in the same condition in which they arrived. As an added bonus, these online markets allow students to sell textbooks to many more vendors than a single university bookstore. Normally, if the bookstore decides it is overstocked with a given text, it will stop buying back that title. The student is stuck with a book that will do nothing but sit on the shelf unopened for twenty years. In the online world, the student only needs to move on to the next website.

Still, there are some potential flaws. When shopping at the campus bookstore, students are dealing with a known quantity. Buying a book online puts them at the mercy of a stranger. If they are purchasing the title from an individual seller or through an online auction site, there is a chance that the book arrive late–or not at all. It is also possible that the student could wind up with an older edition than they actually need for class. This typically is not a problem if the student is dealing with a reputable website that allows them to buy or rent used textbooks. These are often multi-million dollar businesses and employ all the quality controls one would expect from a major e-commerce vendor. If students have any doubts about a site’s legitimacy, a quick web search will usually reveal plenty of reviews and very candid opinions about its quality and service.

The popularity of using websites to rent used textbooks or to buy and sell textbooks is growing by leaps and bounds. Indeed, these sites’ successes have drawn competition from some of the biggest names in the publishing and book selling industries. It does not appear that the trend will slow anytime soon. Unfortunately, just because they are taking advantage of a money-making opportunity, it does not follow that publishers have embraced the new model. Publishers have always struggled to compete with the used textbook business, and now that expanded access to nontraditional markets has caused prices to drop even further from the publishers’ list, the threat is bigger than ever. Brick-and-mortar booksellers are not so much embracing the online textbook market as participating out of necessity. For its part, the publishing industry is pinning its hopes on the eventual adoption of e-books in college classrooms. E-books would virtually eliminate the used textbook market, allowing publishers to charge a premium to each and every student. Another tactic used to circumvent the used textbook market is to frequently issue new editions of texts in hopes of rendering the available used books obsolete.

Regardless of publishers’ hopes, it appears that the widespread adoption of e-books on universities is a long way off. Studies have shown that even if students use e-books for pleasure reading, they prefer printed textbooks for studying. It seems like students will be able to sell textbooks and rent used textbooks for the foreseeable future. While publishers, booksellers, and even authors (who lose royalties through used book sales) may not like the availability of these online textbook markets, students will definitely benefit. And in the end, with more money in their pockets and more time to spend studying instead of waiting in long lines at the university bookstore, students may even see their grades improve.

Sarah O’Sullivan is a representative of CollegeBookRenter.com, where our goal is to make your textbook rental experience as easy as possible! Why rent used textbooks from us? Not only is our rental system faster and easier but with CollegeBookRenter.com, renting your books can save you up to 85% on your textbook costs! If you are looking to sell textbooks online, visit us today!