It’s On: With New Funding, A Battle Escalates Within the Textbook Rental Market
Back in January, online textbook rental service Chegg sent a lawyerly letter to rival Bookrenter, insisting that it stop referring to itself as “#1 in Textbook Rentals” -- a title to which Chegg had laid claim. At the time, Chegg had already raised a stunning $144 million in cash and debt, including from Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and Insight Venture Partners. BookRenter only had collected $6 million, from Storm Ventures and Adams Capital Management. Given their respective sizes, the decision to bear down on Bookrenter seemed ill-conceived, to say the least. (When I interviewed Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig back in March, he made a point of explaining that he “hadn’t even started at the company” when that letter was sent.) Today, BookRenter is fighting back, both with a fresh, $10 million round and a new direction that’s picking up traction. Unlike Chegg, which is placing an expensive bet on developing its own brand and competing with college bookstores, BookRenter thinks it can capture more market share by working with the universities. Whether it works longer-term remains to be seen, but since launching the platform in April, 75 schools around the country, including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of San Diego, have
