Last month we reported on the new Barnes & Noble NOOKstudy program that is available now with a free 7-day trial. Today, Barnes & Noble announced that college students can now get textbooks from Barnes & Noble as new, used, rental, or digital. I spent hundreds each semester on my engineering books and would have loved to have had a better used, rental, or digital option.
The B&N textbook page has quite an assortment of books for you to choose from, actually more than 150,000 new title and 330,000 used ones. Their new textbooks have up to a 30% savings off list price while the used ones can save up to 90% of the list price. The rental option is something I have not ever heard of and you can rent books for 60, 90, or 125 days (depending on your school term length) and includes free return shipping when the rental period expires. You can even get a full refund if you drop a course within the first 21 days of the rental.
NOOKstudy is a digital program that I will be keeping an eye on as my oldest enters college in a couple of years and I would love to save some money and back strain. It will be interesting to see if college students adopt using electronic textbooks and with ebook reader prices dropping to levels that are affordable for everyone this may be the perfect time for such programs. BTW, Barnes & Noble has some promotions going on for college students so make sure to browser around their website for chances to win $5,000 cash and $1,000 in B&N credit.
