( BLACK PR WIRE) ( September 11, 2009) According to the Government Accountability Office, college students spend close to $900 a year purchasing textbooks, which is equivalent to 8 percent of tuition and fees at the average private four-year college, 26 percent at a state university and 72 percent at a community college. With the fall 2009 semester just beginning, both incoming and returning college students are dealing with the challenging task of paying for their textbooks and school supplies on a tight-fit budget. Textbooks in university bookstores are often expensive and some would even question the price of books.

Sometimes a student may get lucky and be able to buy a used book or borrow one from a friend. Yet there are only a certain amount of used books, and friendships have often become distant over issues such as not returning a textbook. Ordering textbooks from websites such as half.com and campusbookstore.com can help save money, but what if you could rent your textbooks from online sources and decide how long you wanted to keep the book? Renting textbooks would give students another way to reduce both costs and paper usage.

As a college student preparing to earn my degree, I recently discovered a few websites that enable incoming and returning students to rent their textbooks online. One of the online rental services I have used over the past year is chegg.com. This is a great resource for students who are looking to save money on their textbooks and want to decide how long they will need a book.

Another interesting aspect of this service is that for every book you sell to the website, you help plant a tree and you are provided free UPS shipping labels to use when you are ready to send your books back. Once you print the labels and place your books in a box, you can drop them off at Office Max and they will ship out your package free of charge.

Some other online rental services similar to chegg.com are bookrenter.com and campusbookrenters.com. These sites are just a few ways that college students can keep extra money in their pockets and use those resources for hanging out with friends.