eCampus, an online textbook retailer, issued an interesting press release reporting an observed surge of textbook rental to the tune of 2000% increase over the last two years. eCampus says that one in five of all college textbook purchases online today through their site are textbook rentals in contrast to online rentals accounting for just 1 percent of all sales two years ago. According to eCampus, new textbooks account for 40 percent of textbook sales on their site down from 71 percent four years ago. eCampus also reports that the purchase of used textbooks on their site has grown steadily over the past three years, from 29 percent of all sales in 2009 to more than two-thirds (37 percent) today.
