Textbook Renter Chegg Becomes More Social

NYTimes: "Chegg is known as the Netflix of college textbooks. The Silicon Valley start-up, which has raised more than $200 million in debt and equity, allows students to rent costly college textbooks, rather than buy them. When the semester is over, they ship the books back and order new ones. The business, said Dan Rosensweig, the former Yahoo and Activision Blizzard executive who became Chegg’s chief executive 13 months ago, is booming. He said Chegg, which plants a tree for every textbook rented, has planted four million trees."

Textbook Rentals No Cure for Rising College Costs

Washington Post: "About half the nation's major college and university bookstores offered textbook rentals this fall, according to the National Association of College Stores, hoping to cut the $600-$900 students spend buying books each year. That's roughly a fivefold increase from around 300 stores a year ago. But schools and publishing experts say the programs are expensive to start up and difficult to operate. In addition, there are complaints that rental prices are still too high, even though they can be as much as half the cost of a new book. ..."

Barnes & Noble's Digital Textbook Rental Service Is Great, Except For The Downloading Your Textbook Part

The Consumerist: "Before you spend money on a time-sensitive e-textbook rental from Barnes & Noble's new NOOKstudy application, take a look through the complaints that have popped up in the past few days on the bookseller's customer forum. Several threads exist where students are complaining that their rentals aren't coming through, but it seems B&N's tech support was away for the weekend because there's been no official response yet"