Renting Textbooks

We in India are fortunate in that many publishers have subcontinent editions of textbooks that are priced less than their international counterparts.

Its only when we go to the US, in pursuit of higher education, that we have to face the steep costs of textbooks, especially when we are on a budget due to limitations on the foreign exchange allowance allotted to us and the weakness of the Rupee. Xeroxed and cyclostyled study materials are not so common in the US, where it is seen as theft of intellectual property.

A smart saving option, under these circumstances, is to rent text-books, at least those you don’t plan on using extensively or keeping with you for any length of time. By doing so you can save 40-90% off of bookstore prices. You can use a service such as campusbookrentals.com which offers free shipping both ways of your rented books, flexible renting periods and allows you to highlight in the textbooks you rent, i.e. use them exactly as if you owned these books.

Here is a video on how Campus Book Rentals works:

BTW these guys donate to Operation Smile with each textbook rented, so you can earn a bit of good Karma too simultaneously by renting your books from them.

And if you have already bought your textbooks and would like to make some money by renting them out, or just make a little more than by just selling them outright, rent them out using RentBack.com. This way you can make 2 to 4 times the money compared to what you’d make  through buyback options.

Here is a video on how RentBack works: