Media Releases

U of T bookstore to offer textbook rental program

August 9, 2010

Toron­to, ON – When school resumes in Sep­tem­ber this year, stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to could poten­tial­ly save hun­dreds of dol­lars when shop­ping for their text­books.

This sum­mer the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Book­store intro­duced a small pilot pro­gram that allowed stu­dents to rent their text­books instead of buy­ing them out­right. The test run was so suc­cess­ful that the Book­store will be expand­ing the ini­tia­tive to include many more titles when class­es resume in the fall.

“The goal of the sum­mer pilot pro­gram was to quick­ly learn what was nec­es­sary to pro­vide the best pro­gram pos­si­ble on a larg­er scale in Sep­tem­ber,” says Chad Saun­ders, Vice-Pres­i­dent of Retail at the UofT Book­store. “The over­all response from stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and pub­lish­ers has been extreme­ly pos­i­tive.”

Stu­dents can now rent their text­books from the book­store, use them for the term (some high­light­ing and note-tak­ing is okay) and then return the books when the course ends. Stu­dents gen­er­al­ly save 40 per cent off the pur­chase price by using this method. So instead of spend­ing more than $170 on a text­book, stu­dents can now rent that same book for $100.

The sav­ings quick­ly become sub­stan­tial. A stu­dent car­ry­ing a full course-load could save between $200 and $300 in a sin­gle term if all of their books are avail­able to be rent­ed. Stu­dents can go to the UofT Book­store web­site to see if their books are avail­able for rental.

One key improve­ment made by the UofT Book­store over sim­i­lar pro­grams in the U.S. is that a stu­dent is guar­an­teed to get a new book every time. All trans­ac­tions are com­plet­ed online and stu­dents can pick up their new rental text­books from the Book­store. UofT was one of the first schools in Cana­da to offer a text­book rental pro­gram with many oth­er schools fol­low­ing suit.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Michael Kennedy
Media Rela­tions Assis­tant
416–946-5025
m.kennedy@utoronto.ca

Chad Saun­ders
VP Retail, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Book­store
416–640-5801
csaunders@utpress.utoronto.ca