Webware

Chegg lets you rent textbooks and save big bucks in the process.

(Credit: Chegg)

While I sit here rotting--er, working happily--in the Cheapskate Labs basement, the lovely Mrs. Cheapskate is busily pursuing a degree in nutrition. That means lots of chemistry classes, which, in turn, means lots of insanely expensive textbooks. And I mean insanely expensive: for some classes, the books cost nearly as much as the credit hours!

Fortunately, we've discovered Chegg, which allows us to "rent" textbooks for significantly less than buying them new--and, in many cases, for less than buying them used.

For example, when Mrs. C needed Macroscale and Microscale Organic Experiments, 5th Edition, for an organic-chemistry class, the best price I could find anywhere (including the school bookstore) was about $125. Chegg's price: $79.57, including two-way shipping (the book arrives with a prepaid return label).

I particularly like this outfit because they work with various environment partners to plant a tree for every textbook you rent, buy, or sell (Chegg pays good cash money for any used, unwanted books you may have). So you not only save money, you also get that warm, fuzzy helping-the-planet feeling.

If you're taking classes at the college level, I highly recommend checking out Chegg for your textbook needs.

When I was a college student living on a lowly work-study salary, few things angered me more than shelling out dough for a required course book, only to have the professor assign a single chapter for reading. (It's been 10 years since I took the class, but I still remember fuming as I paid $30 for 30 pages in From Max Weber.) And don't get me started on science textbooks that cost hundreds of dollars but only net you a few bucks once the class is over.

Online textbook rental service BookRenter wants to ease at least this part of a student's financial pain. As the name implies, BookRenter will rent you a textbook for a set period of time, with the option to extend your rental or even purchase the book as the return deadline draws near. If you choose to return the book, the company provides a prepaid UPS shipping label to minimize the hassle.

The site itself is attractive and easy to use, and I was able to find books from various disciplines in the catalog just by searching for the title. Unlike most used textbooks, BookRenter titles are shipped in new or like-new condition. Of course, the flip side is that you have to return the books in the same condition or face damage fees. (The site will eventually start renting its used-condition books, as well.)

While other textbook rental sites only offer rentals by quarter, semester, or summer, BookRenter offers multiple rental periods--30, 45, 60, 90, or 125 days--with the price set according to how long you're keeping the book. Even if you're renting books for the whole semester, BookRenter's rates are competitive with similar sites. For example, the Max Weber book I mentioned above costs $12.93/semester from BookRenter, $12.98/semester from WhyRentBooks.com, and $13/semester from Chegg (formerly TextBookFlix).

In a perfect world, of course, all these textbooks would be available as digital downloads for you to consume on your preferred reading device. But until that day, you might as well free up some beer money by renting the textbooks you don't need to keep.

DRM and electronic books could help lower college educational expenses while at the same time improving the health of students.

Here's why: the economics of textbook publishing are broken. There's a reason that an introductory biology textbook costs $125 new, and it's not because it's printed on high-quality paper using a special 12-color press. It's because when the student is done with the book, he or she sells it back to the campus bookstore, or to another student. The publisher is thus deprived of recurring revenue on the title. So it raises book prices, heaping the revenue it would get from multiple students over multiple years onto one unlucky soul. But the more expensive books get, the more likely students are to recycle them. It's a death spiral of cost.

Peter's new Sony PRS-505 Reader.

(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)

This is how digital rights and e-books can help: what if, instead of selling paper books to students, publishers sold digital copies? Already some textbooks are available online or in downloads, but students need easier access to information than a standard 7-pound, battery-limited laptop can provide. An instant-on electronic book is just the ticket. The technology is here, or nearly so. If the textbook content was licensed to the user and not resellable, then the publisher could sell it to each individual who needed it. There'd be no secondary market and the publishers would not have to inflate their prices to make up for that.

And the health benefits? It's a lot better for your back if you're just carrying one 3-pound e-book instead of a half-dozen 8-pound printed texts.

Now, there are dozens of ways publishers could screw this up, mostly by overpricing their content, which would encourage hacking of the DRM, which would in response lead to onerous copy protection that could make e-books unworkable. But if--and it's a big if--publishers get on board and start selling licenses to their texts instead of the books themselves, everyone (except bookstores) could benefit. I would be surprised if e-book manufacturers weren't pushing on this angle right now. See the hands-on hardware and software reviews of Sony's new PRS-505 electronic book.

See also Textbookflix (book rental) and CafeScribe (downloadable texts, but limited selection).

Here's a concept for textbooks that's almost as cool as library checkouts. It's called TextBookFlix, and as the name would suggest, it's pretty much like Netflix for textbooks--with a twist. There's no monthly subscription fee, just a one-time fee to "check out" a book for an entire semester. It's kind of a hybrid between the "no late fees" mentality of Netflix, and the loaner system you get with libraries. The service already has more than two million titles available and a search tool that lets you find your books via ISBN, author, title, or by course.

Cheapskates might not be getting off scot-free however. You're not paying full prices, but many of the books still aren't "cheap." In my testing I found that TextBookFlix was saving about 50 to 60 percent on the retail price on the large, reference-style textbooks--which means you still end up paying a hefty price (more than three pizzas) on a $130-plus textbook. For the smaller titles priced less than $50, the price is a little less. A lot depends on whether or not the titles are new, along with the discount that's been generated.

As a recent college grad, I remember all too well having to buy absurdly expensive textbooks that are now sitting vacantly in some storage boxes in my closet. While book swaps and intercampus book purchase programs are handy, services like this would be great for some of the titles that you know you're not going to be using come the end of semester.

The service is currently in an invite-only beta. To get access, you need to sign up for the waiting list. In the meantime, you can search through the catalog and calculate prices.

Norton Anthologies, one of the more expensive items for most English majors, can be fetched at less than half the cost on TextBookFlix. The only snag is you need to return the book a few months later.

(Credit: CNET Networks)