<p>I am trying to get a extbook rental service going in my college. The process is pretty simple: we collect a list of people willing to rent out textbooks and then find "rentees" for them. We would provide contracts for both parties to protect both the "renter" from taking advantage of the rentee and the rentee from taking advantage of the book owner. </p>
<p>Also, I am trying to compose a list of people interested in buying books second hand. The people could maybe name their own prices and we would try to connect them with bookstores wanted to sell to them. That way, students get better prices.</p>
<p>For your first idea: What incentive do people have to rent the book rather than sell it? Odds are, there will only be demand for the book for one year after its use (by then, another text/edition may be needed), so you will only get one or two rentals out of a textbook. If the sellback price is greater than the amount I will make renting it two times, I'm going to just sell it. You would be relying people who are planning to keep their textbooks forever in order to maintain supply, and I'm not sure how many of those people there are (though I am one of them).</p>
<p>Also, your contracts aren't going to provide you much protection unless you're willing to enforce them. Will you have to ability to do so?</p>
<p>For your second idea: Why would someone use your service over a website that sells used books or one that compares used book prices from a variety of places (i.e. campusbooks.com)?</p>
<p>Your first comment:We can't cater to everyone. We would just cater to those courses (e.g. ones with custom courseware) that use the same books over and over and no one really wants to keep the literature. Or maybe the poeple want to keep their books but just want some extra spare change in the end.
As for the contract, there isn't really any major major thing we can do. What do institutions like the library do or those already renting out textbooks do?</p>
<p>Your second comment: I'm not in the United States so these services don't apply to us. I thought it may have been a way to provide additional revenue to small bookstores and/or make it easier for sellers to find book buyers. Book buyers obvious get decent prices.</p>
<p>"We can't cater to everyone. We would just cater to those courses (e.g. ones with custom courseware) that use the same books over and over and no one really wants to keep the literature. Or maybe the poeple want to keep their books but just want some extra spare change in the end. "</p>
<p>Yes, but the question is HOW MANY people fall into these categories. It sounds like your market may be too small to generate a reasonable profit. </p>
<p>As for compiling lists for stores...if there really are not any websites that service wherever you are from (which you really should have mentioned in your initial post...that's important information), you'd really need to work out the numbers and talk to some store owners. Can you provide enough of a margin to satisfy both you and the stores, while keeping price low enough for your buyers? What benefits are there for your buyers/suppliers to use you over, say, ebay? If you're just going to "connect" buyers to sellers, how are you making money?</p>
<p>As for the size of market for rentals, hard to say how large the market is. But we essentially don't have any competition so any profit is good. And plus, if I could rent the book for $40, why would I pay for it for $60? Books generally change every 2-3 years, so probably you can make more money renting. But hey, never know. Any money is good money and other schools have done the same stuff. </p>
<p>The obvious answer is the same thing isn't available on ebay. Its pretty much impossible to beat ebay on prices when you can get a book for 10 if your lucky. But there aren't so many of those deals. </p>
<p>The buyers use the service free and service only charged to dealers (i'm thinking). Maybe it could help generate additional profit for other university bookstores that use the same book or other small bookstores. Just in case you have leftover books in your store, its a place where we just you ready buyers. Otherwise, they'd just sit there collecting dust. </p>
<p>Doesn't matter, this business costs almost nothing to start. Worst comes to worse, there is entrepreneurial experience on resume. :)</p>
<p>you could enforce it by getting everyone who agrees to get the books to give you their credit card numbers/checking account and if thye dont return it you extract that amount from the persons account and vice versa.</p>