Book borrowing balloons

For Darlene Arguera, renting textbooks isn't about saving money — it's about saving space.

"I don't want a stack of textbooks a mile high at the end of the year," the senior government and politics major said.

Arguera said she doesn't see a major savings in buying and then re-selling a used textbook instead of renting a new one because there's always the risk it could net only a few dollars or be ineligible for buy-back, creating piles of used books collecting dust in her room.

The University Book Center and Maryland Book Exchange hopped on the affordable book bandwagon last semester — BookHolders joined in this semester — creating textbook rental programs, and both stores continued to rent books this fall.

"It's been very successful; we feel real good about it," UBC manager Mike Gore said.

Gore said the system at UBC is "very simple." Students can pluck a new book off the shelf — labeled with a bright yellow "Rent Me!" sticker — and pay 55 percent less than the cost of buying the book by returning it at the end of the semester.

UBC expanded its volume of books for rent from about 125 titles, encompassing 300 courses, to nearly 1,200, spanning about 2,600 courses, Gore said.

In January, BookHolders store manager Sam White told The Diamondback the store had no plans to begin a rental program. Last week, however, it began renting out more than 100,000 textbooks. A flier advertising the program says, "You're welcome."

"When the program came out, we were looking at it; we were examining it; we had been looking at renting for a while," BookHolders marketing manager Ryna Luckert said. "We just wanted to make sure when we did it, we did it right and did it the best way we could."

BookHolders rents both new and used books, typically ranging from 50 to 60 percent off the new or used listed price. A large percentage of titles are available for rent, and most courses have at least one rentable book, Luckert said.

Managers also boast that the BookHolders program doesn't include costly late fees; students are forced to pay 75 percent of a new book's cost — in addition to the rental fee and an administrative fee — if they don't get a rented book back to UBC within 10 days after the end of finals.

For its part, UBC had rolled out its rental program "with the encouragement of the university" to help students save money, according to Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Jim Osteen.

"Our contract with [UBC] requires that they work hard to stay on the cutting edge of delivering textbook materials to our students," he said. "So going from sales, to new and used, to rental, to digital textbooks is consistent with what we have been asking them to do."

But not all students are sure textbook rentals are going to save them money.

Senior chemistry major Daniel Redman said he decided against renting because he would still need to buy books with similar information for graduate school.

However, the program has treated senior criminology and criminal justice major Anthony Clayton's bank account well, saving him an estimated $400 in one semester.

Clayton said he took four classes last semester and spent $200 to rent his textbooks. In the past, he had spent almost $600 on books for the same number of classes.

"I think they're outrageous," he said of textbook prices. "You shouldn't have to spend $147 for a textbook."

Some federal legislators agreed. A provision under the Higher Education Opportunity Act, effective July 1, is aimed at lessening the cost of textbooks for students, forcing publishers to disclose more information about textbooks — such as a list of revisions made to new editions — and to sell CDs, DVDs and workbooks separately.

roubein at umdbk dot com