After a successful spring, two College Park bookstores will continue to offer textbook rentals alongside traditional sales, letting students borrow a new book for the semester at less than half the price of buying it.
The University Book Center in the Stamp Student Union is expanding its rental pilot program, doubling its available rentals from 150 to 300 titles, and the Maryland Book Exchange on Route 1 will continue to offer hundreds of rental books of its own, managers at the two stores said.
The Book Center’s pilot program — also tried in two dozen other Barnes & Noble-owned stores nationwide — was “surprisingly successful” at this university, according to Book Center manager Mike Gore.
“Everyone’s trying to save money. Books are expensive, and if you can rent it and come out ahead money-wise, why not?” Gore said.
But some students said the flexibility of owning the book outright is worth the extra cost. They’re free to take notes in the books as they please, donate them to charity, recoup the purchase price by selling them privately or — like sophomore electrical engineering major Ronak Shah — save them for future reference.
“I might want to keep them. A lot of my classes build on each other,” Shah said.
“There’s a different feeling when you rent a book,” junior computer engineering major Tam Nguyen added.
Bookholders, the third major bookstore that caters to this university, is also not a fan of textbook rentals.
“We’re not worried at all,” store manager Sam White said in January of his competitors’ rental programs. “Numbers are still up this year, and we haven’t noticed any change with students renting.”
The store’s owners didn’t return phone calls this week to say why they weren’t interested in offering a rental program.
Ted Ankeney, who owns the Book Exchange, said the lower bills was a major draw for his rental customers and added that convenience is another key selling point.
“All you have to do is rent it, use it and bring it back,” Ankeney said.
Ankeney acknowledged renting books is not ideal for everyone, but said he thinks the fact that renters will never get stuck with a textbook that bookstores aren’t buying back makes it the best choice for most students.
“It’s like a guaranteed buy-back,” Ankeney said.
Both stores’ guarantee extends even to books that students have taken notes in, the managers said, as the books are re-sold as used anyway. Major damage, such as a broken binding, would void the rental agreement and the student would need to buy the book or pay extra fees.
“Don’t feed it to the dog, and don’t throw it in the bay,” Gore said.
While Gore said textbook renting seems to be the way of the future, it remains a niche in College Park. Both Gore and Ankeney said they couldn’t tell exactly what portion of their business went to rentals, but only a fraction of their books — fewer than a thousand titles at each store — are available for rent.
And many students, including sophomore engineering major Kevin Matthew, said they weren’t even aware of the rental option.
“Doesn’t everyone just buy them?” Matthew asked.
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