Leila Mattimore searches for textbooks on Chegg.com
Leila Mattimore poses with textbooks
By: Katie Lazzara
ATHENS, Ga. -- Everyone knows that textbooks are expensive and present an immense financial burden for students, but few have found a successful way of combating these rising prices.
The cost of books can add hundreds of dollars to a college bill each semester, and often the expense is not covered by loans. Publishers release new versions of textbooks every few years, making them difficult to sell back and minimizing the
ATHENS, Ga. -- Everyone knows that textbooks are expensive and present an immense financial burden for students, but few have found a successful way of combating these rising prices.
The cost of books can add hundreds of dollars to a college bill each semester, and often the expense is not covered by loans. Publishers release new versions of textbooks every few years, making them difficult to sell back and minimizing the
number of used books available.
Whether you are searching online or on foot, it really comes down to comparison shopping.
Jon Bensabat, 21, who is double majoring in Spanish and international business at the University of Georgia, decides where to shop for textbooks based on the nature of the book he is buying.
“For my Spanish classes, my literature books cost me around $10 in the store and $7 online,” he said. “It’s not worth the $3 I would save by shopping online. My business books, on the other hand, can cost as much as $200, so the saving I find online is definitely worth my time.”
Local bookstores rely on the advantages of convenience and reliability to compete with the affordable prices online shopping can offer.
Eric Harvey, a manager at Baxter Street Bookstore, said shopping at local bookstores is often more affordable than students think.
“There are added costs when you shop online,” he said. “Shipping can cost eight bucks a book. People think they are always cheaper online and that is just not true.”
Harvey acknowledged students are buying books online but is confident that online shopping will never be able surpass the advantages of buying in-store.
“You don’t have to wait around to get your book or to get the refund,” he said. “We’ve been doing business 25-30 years, and we know what we’re doing. A lot of times we see students who end up having to buy two books because the original book they purchased online never arrived.”
As for what the future of competing with online sales may bring, Harvey said that his bookstore plans to stick with its current strategy.
“We are just doing what we’ve always done,” he said. “It takes you two minutes to come in and then you have your book and you’re ready to go.”
Leila Mattimore, a recent University of Georgia graduate with a degree in Journalism from Tallahassee, Fla., said she prefers the convenience of buying books at a local store over taking the risk of buying online.
“With buying my books, I usually procrastinate, and I am also very impatient,” she said. “By the time I get around to buying my books, I usually need them the next day, so I don’t have time to wait around two weeks for them to come in. I’ve heard horror stories of students never receiving their books and ultimately having to purchase them twice—that doesn’t seem like savings to me.”
For online shopping to be comparable to buying books at local bookstores, Web sites would have to find a way to guarantee same-day or next-day delivery.
Chegg.com is a Web site that offers students an alternative to buying textbooks online or at local bookstores - renting textbooks at a discounted price and returning them after a specified amount of time.
Chegg.com may be unfamiliar to some because the company itself is fairly new, but since its creation in 2007, Chegg.com has become one of the leading online services for renting books.
The site’s homepage explains the process in three steps: rent them, get them and return them.
Chegg.com allows students to rent books for a quarter, semester or 60 days and advertises the fact that for every book you rent, a tree will be planted in a location of your choice. This is ideal for many budget and environmentally conscience students.
According to their Web site, the company purchases their books from the same publishers that college bookstores do and has an inventory of around 4.2 million books.
Joni Manos, a 20-year-old Spanish major from Beaufort, SC, prefers renting her textbooks online because it is cheaper.
“I can rent a book online at Chegg.com for $60 that would cost me $120 to buy at the bookstore,” she said.
Manos does not think she is losing money by giving up the opportunity to sell back her books.
“You are not always guaranteed to get that money back,” she said. “Sometimes they come out with a newer version of the book and sometimes [the bookstore] already has enough copies. If I rent, I am guaranteed that saved cost.”
With no subscription fee, a pre-paid shipping label and a re-usable box that the books can be returned in, the total amount of money a person will spend on the Web site comes down to the rental price of the book plus the cost of shipping and handling.
Shipping can be as little as $1.99 for standard U.S. shipping, or as much as $12.99 for next- day shipping.
The vice president of public relations for Chegg.com, Tina Couch, boasts about the savings available to students by using the Web site.
“Chegg has saved students more than $155 million by using our site and the savings continue to increase,” Couch said. “If a student rents all their textbooks from Chegg, they can save on average $500 per year. That’s like at $2,000 scholarship to school.”
Couch also said that students are basically allowed to treat the textbooks as their own.
“Chegg allows students to highlight within reason and asks that students do not write in the books,” she said. “We request that customers keep the books in good condition for the next person.”
Although the Web site primarily focuses on its rental service, Chegg.com gives students the choice to buy their books if they would like to keep them, minus the cost already incurred from renting.
Edited by: Ashton McKinnon
Whether you are searching online or on foot, it really comes down to comparison shopping.
Jon Bensabat, 21, who is double majoring in Spanish and international business at the University of Georgia, decides where to shop for textbooks based on the nature of the book he is buying.
“For my Spanish classes, my literature books cost me around $10 in the store and $7 online,” he said. “It’s not worth the $3 I would save by shopping online. My business books, on the other hand, can cost as much as $200, so the saving I find online is definitely worth my time.”
Local bookstores rely on the advantages of convenience and reliability to compete with the affordable prices online shopping can offer.
Eric Harvey, a manager at Baxter Street Bookstore, said shopping at local bookstores is often more affordable than students think.
“There are added costs when you shop online,” he said. “Shipping can cost eight bucks a book. People think they are always cheaper online and that is just not true.”
Harvey acknowledged students are buying books online but is confident that online shopping will never be able surpass the advantages of buying in-store.
“You don’t have to wait around to get your book or to get the refund,” he said. “We’ve been doing business 25-30 years, and we know what we’re doing. A lot of times we see students who end up having to buy two books because the original book they purchased online never arrived.”
As for what the future of competing with online sales may bring, Harvey said that his bookstore plans to stick with its current strategy.
“We are just doing what we’ve always done,” he said. “It takes you two minutes to come in and then you have your book and you’re ready to go.”
Leila Mattimore, a recent University of Georgia graduate with a degree in Journalism from Tallahassee, Fla., said she prefers the convenience of buying books at a local store over taking the risk of buying online.
“With buying my books, I usually procrastinate, and I am also very impatient,” she said. “By the time I get around to buying my books, I usually need them the next day, so I don’t have time to wait around two weeks for them to come in. I’ve heard horror stories of students never receiving their books and ultimately having to purchase them twice—that doesn’t seem like savings to me.”
For online shopping to be comparable to buying books at local bookstores, Web sites would have to find a way to guarantee same-day or next-day delivery.
Chegg.com is a Web site that offers students an alternative to buying textbooks online or at local bookstores - renting textbooks at a discounted price and returning them after a specified amount of time.
Chegg.com may be unfamiliar to some because the company itself is fairly new, but since its creation in 2007, Chegg.com has become one of the leading online services for renting books.
The site’s homepage explains the process in three steps: rent them, get them and return them.
Chegg.com allows students to rent books for a quarter, semester or 60 days and advertises the fact that for every book you rent, a tree will be planted in a location of your choice. This is ideal for many budget and environmentally conscience students.
According to their Web site, the company purchases their books from the same publishers that college bookstores do and has an inventory of around 4.2 million books.
Joni Manos, a 20-year-old Spanish major from Beaufort, SC, prefers renting her textbooks online because it is cheaper.
“I can rent a book online at Chegg.com for $60 that would cost me $120 to buy at the bookstore,” she said.
Manos does not think she is losing money by giving up the opportunity to sell back her books.
“You are not always guaranteed to get that money back,” she said. “Sometimes they come out with a newer version of the book and sometimes [the bookstore] already has enough copies. If I rent, I am guaranteed that saved cost.”
With no subscription fee, a pre-paid shipping label and a re-usable box that the books can be returned in, the total amount of money a person will spend on the Web site comes down to the rental price of the book plus the cost of shipping and handling.
Shipping can be as little as $1.99 for standard U.S. shipping, or as much as $12.99 for next- day shipping.
The vice president of public relations for Chegg.com, Tina Couch, boasts about the savings available to students by using the Web site.
“Chegg has saved students more than $155 million by using our site and the savings continue to increase,” Couch said. “If a student rents all their textbooks from Chegg, they can save on average $500 per year. That’s like at $2,000 scholarship to school.”
Couch also said that students are basically allowed to treat the textbooks as their own.
“Chegg allows students to highlight within reason and asks that students do not write in the books,” she said. “We request that customers keep the books in good condition for the next person.”
Although the Web site primarily focuses on its rental service, Chegg.com gives students the choice to buy their books if they would like to keep them, minus the cost already incurred from renting.
Edited by: Ashton McKinnon
Clearer, less speculative lead than the orginal. Good job getting a source from Chegg, but the bottom half of the story now reads like an advertisement for that site. Practice using more neutral language and approaching sources more skeptically.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a little formatting trouble with the photos.