By Heather Bowser   hbowser@dnronline.com

JMU junior Joe Gochenour, 22, of Woodstock gets help from textbook clerk Kathy Kines at the JMU Bookstore. Several school’s bookstores have started offering textbook rentals as an alternative to buying. Photo by Nikki Fox

When Holly Fox started college last year, she expected tuition to be expensive. What surprised her, however, was the “incredible” cost of her textbooks.

As a freshman at Bridgewater College, Fox said her dad shelled out more than $300 for books that semester alone.

“He said it would be easier to buy them at the bookstore the first time, but it was really expensive,” said Fox, who grew up in Timberville.

A few months later, a co-worker introduced Fox to the idea of renting her textbooks online. Since then, she has rented her books from Chegg.com and saved about $300.

“I got two textbooks for the price of one,” said 20-year-old Fox, who now pays for her own books. “I don’t even look anywhere else now and I tell all my friends about it.”

A rising trend
Fox, her co-worker and their friends are far from alone.

Online retailers are increasing in popularity and, starting this fall, the four local college bookstores are jumping aboard.

The bookstores at James Madison University, Eastern Mennonite University, Blue Ridge Community College and Bridgewater College are opening their own rental services to compete with online book rental sites. Every book offered in the textbook rental program is 45    percent off, so a $100 book can be rented for $55.

The four stores are all managed by one of the country’s largest college textbook retailers, Illinois-based Follett Higher Education Group, which launched the national textbook rental program this fall.

Officials at Follett said they began the program to compete with online retailers and help students better afford their books.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the cost of textbooks has risen twice as fast as inflation for two decades. These days, students spend nearly $700 annually on books, prompting some students not to buy textbooks if used ones are not available, according to local bookstore officials.

“This is a reaction to an alarming trend in higher education where students are simply not buying their course materials,” said Elio Distaola, director of campus relations at Follett. “It’s a tremendous risk for us but it’s worth it.”

The risk Distaola is talking about is financial. Bookstores make less money on rentals than sales, Distaola said. It takes bookstores four rentals before they begin to turn a profit on one book, he said.

Local response
Managers at the local stores are reporting positive responses.

At the JMU and EMU bookstores, about 75 percent of students who learn about the program are choosing it, say the managers there.

At BRCC, between half and two-thirds of students who learn about the program are choosing it, said manager Pat Goldsborogh.

“Forty-five percent off the new price is a huge savings for them,” Goldsborogh said.
Though the stores lose money on the program, Goldsborogh said the most important thing is helping the students afford their schooling.

“There really isn’t that many ways we can make a difference in the cost of education,” she said.  “We have to change the way we do business.”