2008 Woodie Awards
Students save big with book rentals
New Web site offers students textbooks at a fraction of bookstore prices
Stacy Taylor
Issue date: 10/10/05 Section: News
A new option for purchasing overpriced college textbooks has arrived.
BookRenter.com lets students rent, not purchase, their books and return them via mail services. Though it's been in development for nearly a year, the company launched just last month, coinciding with the 2005-06 academic school year.
"I think we have a real strong product to offer students, and the idea is long overdue," Colin Barceloux, president of the company, said.
BookRenter.com is an e-commerce company based out of Northern California. It is currently the only book rental system on a national level.
The company provides both undergraduate and graduate text books for its customers, along with a wide variety of other products such as audio CDs and study aids. All of its books are either brand new or like-new, and the books can be found easily on the search engine provided by the Web site.
BookRenter.com receives most of its inventory from the Baker & Taylor Corporation.
"We have over 300,000 books currently available, and we continue to grow our inventory each day," Barceloux said.
The company is strictly Internet-based and does not plan on opening any retail stores. However, they do plan on rolling out a Campus Rep program that will place BookRenter.com student representatives on various college campuses.
"This will make it even easier for students to access us," Barceloux said.
BookRenter.com will soon be collaborating with Mono Dry Highlighter, a company that produces erasable highlighters, to ensure that the books stay clean for future renters.
"Their Web site is a really good idea," UCF freshman Jennifer Slyh said. "The rental system seems like it would save students a lot of time and money."
BookRenter.com offers six different rental periods ranging from two weeks to four months. Rental periods begin from the date the books are delivered to the last day of the period. Students also have the option of buying their rented books anytime they choose.
BookRenter.com lets students rent, not purchase, their books and return them via mail services. Though it's been in development for nearly a year, the company launched just last month, coinciding with the 2005-06 academic school year.
"I think we have a real strong product to offer students, and the idea is long overdue," Colin Barceloux, president of the company, said.
BookRenter.com is an e-commerce company based out of Northern California. It is currently the only book rental system on a national level.
The company provides both undergraduate and graduate text books for its customers, along with a wide variety of other products such as audio CDs and study aids. All of its books are either brand new or like-new, and the books can be found easily on the search engine provided by the Web site.
BookRenter.com receives most of its inventory from the Baker & Taylor Corporation.
"We have over 300,000 books currently available, and we continue to grow our inventory each day," Barceloux said.
The company is strictly Internet-based and does not plan on opening any retail stores. However, they do plan on rolling out a Campus Rep program that will place BookRenter.com student representatives on various college campuses.
"This will make it even easier for students to access us," Barceloux said.
BookRenter.com will soon be collaborating with Mono Dry Highlighter, a company that produces erasable highlighters, to ensure that the books stay clean for future renters.
"Their Web site is a really good idea," UCF freshman Jennifer Slyh said. "The rental system seems like it would save students a lot of time and money."
BookRenter.com offers six different rental periods ranging from two weeks to four months. Rental periods begin from the date the books are delivered to the last day of the period. Students also have the option of buying their rented books anytime they choose.