By Jennifer Hilinski

To buy books for the fall semester, students are either crowding local bookstores or ordering textbooks online.  With no local bookstores offering a rental program or book exchange, students spend hundreds of dollars on books each semester.

However, Web sites such as Cengagebrain.com, Chegg.com and Swaptree.com are designed to provide students with a cheaper alternative to get their books.

Cengage Learning, one of the nation’s largest textbook providers, now offers a rental program for students and is the first higher education publisher to rent textbooks directly to students.

The Cengage Learning rental option rents books at 40-to-70 percent less than the sale price. Buyers gain immediate access to the first chapter of the book electronically and have a choice of shipping options for the printed book.

If students choose to rent, a rental period of 60, 90 or 120 days is offered, and students can print a return label from the Web site and return the textbook, or they can buy it.

Students who rent their books do not have to worry about whether the bookstore will buy them back at the end of the year, said Lindsay Brown, director of Corporate Communications at Cengage Learning.

“Benefits of renting directly from us, the publisher, is that students are guaranteed that the Cengage Learning books they need will be in stock and that they will get the correct edition upon providing the ISBN number of the materials being used in their class,” Brown said.

UK students can use the Cengage rental program if their class uses the publisher’s book, Brown said.

Swaptree.com is a book exchange program that allows students to get their textbooks for free.  Instead of purchasing books, UK students can trade their old textbooks for the new ones they need.  Buyers list the textbooks they want to trade as well as the items they want in exchange, and the site finds all of the items that they can receive for the items they have.

Mark Hexamer, co-founder of Swaptree.com, said the site requires users to only pay for postage, which is around $2.50.

“Swaptree is a great way to refresh your many media collections by getting rid of the old and bringing in the new, without wasting your weekly paycheck,” Hexamer said.

As the rental program continues to gain popularity, UK students have yet to see any local bookstore that offers such an option.

David Wade, manager at Wildcat Textbooks, said the bookstore does not have a rental program but does not object to the idea if it benefits everyone involved.

“If a rental program were to become an attractive option, we’d certainly pursue it.  However, it’s my understanding that for those programs to work for all parties, faculty members must commit to use the same text for several semesters,” Wade said.

Some bookstores have not offered rental option because of how often professors upgrade to new editions, some every two years.

Kathleen Wheeler, a UK art history professor, favors the renting program if it means saving students money and helping promote the recycling and reuse of textbooks.

“I do tend to use the same textbook for multiple years, but this would likely not be the case for many other instructors and professors on campus,” Wheeler said.

Professors like James Krupa, who teaches biology, agree the price publishers are asking for books are quite an expense.

“I don’t use textbooks, as they are expensive, contain more information than can be taught correctly in a class in one semester, and are generally useless,” Krupa said.

Wade said students who shop at Wildcat Textbooks spend an average of about $342 for a full semester’s worth of books. Many students resell textbooks at the end of each semester, feeding the used-book market.

“Our customers receive on average about $130 when selling back a semester’s worth of books,” he said.

Business senior Elizabeth King said she wondered if expensive books were even worth purchasing.

“If renting is available at a lower price, more people would have books and probably be better prepared,” King said.