On the Web: Book rentals

It's that time of year for college text books. Can you say sticker shock? That's why more and more students are choosing to rent their books on line to save a bunch of money in the process. Here are just two of the more popular rental websites.

The first is chegg.com.  It's one of the best recognized and most widely used. On this site you can rent them, buy them directly, get them shipped to your dorm and when you're done ship them back for free. They'll also plant a tree everytime you rent. 

Chegg gives you the list price, the rental price and your savings... up to 72 percent for some business law book.

Chegg also displays the most commonly sold books at most colleges. They also offer a 30-day any reason return guarantee. That's in case you drop out of a class or ordered the wrong book.  You can also sell your books here.

There is also bookrenter.com.  You rent the book.. you receive the book.. you return the book. 

Just like chegg you need to make sure you have the isdn number.  That's usually a 10 to 13 digit number which you simply type in to get the correct book.  Your teacher is required by law to supply with that number.

Enter it and you get a brief description, the author, and all the pricing information from new to used to rental or you can search the websites by subject category.

Bookrenter also let's you set the length of the rental... from as short as 30 days to a full semester. The longer the rental the more expensive... but always quite a bit less than the full purchase price.

• www.chegg.com
• www.bookrenter.com