Chegg.com: Rent Books, Save Money

USC student Candice Winters checks out Chegg.
(Credit: Getty Images)

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Here are some statistics that will probably not surprise anyone between the ages of 18 and 22. According to the National Retail Federation, college students and their parents are expected to spend an average of $618.12 on textbooks this year, and, because of this, more than one-quarter of college students do not buy all their required textbooks.

Coming from the perspective of a college student struggling to appease her parents academically and financially, I would like to present an alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on books that, frankly, you will never, ever open again.

Forget the bookstore that overcharges you and then buys your books back for a significantly discounted price. Do away with buying books online; the shipping cost makes up for the “low” price of the book.

Behold Chegg.com, the No. 1 college textbook rental company. It saves students an average of 70 percent off the price of textbooks every school year. Already on 6,000 campuses, Chegg is the online savior to your school needs.

Chegg.com CEO Jim Safka was just off USC’s campus Aug. 22, slinging free burritos and coffee to local starving students. He’s making the rounds to schools across the country to spread the word about the alternative to buying books.

“Who’s in on this thing? Is it the professors? Bookstores? Publishers?” demands the businessman behind the company that has saved students 45 million dollars and counting. “The model is very simple: You rent the books. When you’re done with them, send them back. It’s a very fundamental problem that textbooks are just too expensive.”

Not only are the books being recycled, but Chegg.com will plant a tree for every book you rent culminating in over 750 acres of new forests planted to date.

“Over four million trees get destroyed every year just to make paper for college textbooks,” explains Safka. “It’s not like we’re righteous environmentalists. We’ve got the books that are recycled, recycled, recycled. It just feels like it’s part of our DNA to help the environment and offset some of what has to be torn down to get these books.