The info: Renting vs. buying textbooks

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Buying textbooks for college courses can add up quickly.

"Freshman year, I would spend $400 to $500," said Tyler Davis, a senior at the University of Texas .

For Davis, freshman year was the only year he spent hundreds on books because he decided to rent from a site called Chegg .

"It allows you to rent your books, so at the end of the semester you can return them," said Davis. "So it's a lot cheaper, and I never save my books anyway. So it's a lot better to rent them."

The trend of renting versus buying has led to a lot of textbook rental sites to pop up on the Web, such as BookRenter , Campus Book Rentals and Skoobit .

On the sites we found, most textbooks were at least 50 percent off the bookstore purchase price.

And since the number of textbooks you need can quickly stack up, Davis found renting saved him about $300.

"When I went to Chegg, my total bill was about $200," said Davis.

But just like a library book, it has to be returned at the end of the semester or you face additional fees. Still, it's something more and more college students are doing to save money.