I know someone who has just started to rent college textbooks. I have always bought mine because I would rather have a copy at home than rely on there being a copy free in the library. It had never occurred to me that I might be able to rent a book rather than pay out for one. I have therefore started looking into textbook rentals as I think that some of the course books will be ones that I will be unlikely to ever use again and so by just having a copy for a short period of time will mean that I have it there when I need it but I will not have to pay the full price for it and then try to sell it again, when I am unlikely to be able to make the money back that I paid for it. I know that some people like to have their own copies of books so that they can treasure them and write in them but I am not like that. If a book is that good then I will buy it, but I often find that course textbooks are not as good as other books that I discover in the library on the same subjects so I am happy not to commit to buying them.