Ask HN: Rate our idea / site (Textbook Revolt)

[jmathai]

http://www.textbookrevolt.com

It's a student to student textbook rental platform. Renters earn money by renting their books out (repeatedly) while retaining ownership. Rentees save money by paying only for the time they need the book (a semester).

We launched in 2007 as a textbook exchange platform. While it worked great in theory we've identified many of the issues that made the idea not realistically feasible.

That's how we came to the s2s (student to student) rental notion. It solves most, if not all, of the issues that kept a free exchange system from working. Plus there's plenty of upside for students on both end of the transaction.

It's tough to ensure a smooth transaction, but we feel we've made it dead simple to do. Thoughts?

[mschwar99]

I know that I would have loved to have a service like this that functioned when I was in school.

Can't quite tell how you are going to go about it, but it seems like this type of venture might have the best shot of working by focusing on a single campus at first. A lot of groundwork marketing to social organizations, academic clubs, whatnot in order to try and build a local community whose needs overlap to prove the model and then scale out. Focusing on a single campus or two would make the "ball rolling" phase much more achievable as well.

Also getting going before finals week when everyone is selling books for beer money so you have an "inventory" for the next semester or investing some money in common textbooks yourselves to lend out to get the ball rolling couldn't hurt.

Site wise I can't really see much as everything seems to route back to the home page. I'd say your tag line could use an edit - "Cheap college textbook rentals just got better" isn't really a call to action or very descriptive of what the service the site preforms.

Good luck!

[jmathai → mschwar99]

Thanks for the feedback. We've thought about starting out at one university or even at a specific college at the university. We're racing to have it ready for Winter semester but are not sure if we'll make it.

As far as the links and the call to action goes, we threw that up while we relaunched the site. We're focusing a lot on the call to action once we really launch.

We're targeting December 14th.

[mschwar99 → jmathai]

Right on. If you are going to focus on a single community I'd suggest branding the site (or at least a corner of the site) that way. When trying to build your first community I think it would earn more trust from people if they knew that this service was being focused at them.

[jmathai → mschwar99]

Just curious. We were thinking of doing a college in the bay area and another in Cincinnati (proximity of myself and co-founder). Do you think this would be better received at an elite school like Stanford or a community college like DeAnza?

[mschwar99 → jmathai]

Personally I think it would work better at which ever school you were able to be more engaged with and / or knew better.

There might be some benefit to focusing on a more technical school in terms of the student's willingness to trust a web site. However, I really think the key to getting your first community would be personal knowledge of the school and ability to market on the ground.

[patrickryan]

Here is the problem I see with this idea.

Why would students pay for a rental book that is nearly the same price as a used book they can buy elsewhere (half.com, amazon, etc.) and also own it? At the end of the semester, they can sell the book they own for some extra cash instead of returning the rental book.

[jmathai → patrickryan]

There will undoubtedly be some students who prefer to buy from Amazon and Half. We do, however, believe that enough students would want to participate in a system with their peers. There's psychological and financial upside to the idea which resonates with many students we've conducted surveys with.

We don't have to or even expect to replace Amazon or local bookstores. Not in the short time anyway.

[jmathai]

Clickable? http://www.textbookrevolt.com - yay :)

[gojomo]

My own thoughts:

- what's the cost advantage over the usual buy-and-sell-back-to-used=bookstores approach?

- do enough students want to hold the inventory and take on the risk of nonreturns/expiring editions/etc.? (If this is a economic winner, I would have already expected it to be done informally already by hustling undergrads... is it common?)

- how much more lifetime does the physical textbook have?

And if you've been at this since 2007, you probably know that various kinds of textbook exchanges are so commonly proposed (and go nowhere) that they're (in some circles) a running joke. Google [sethi "trade your used books"] for what I mean.

[jmathai → gojomo]

Good questions. Let me try to respond by line.

- Renting a book out once will yield the renter within 75% of what they'd get by selling back to the bookstore. You should be able to rent it out 2-4 times which means it yields more than selling back to the bookstores. This, of course, implies demand for your book.

- That's the big question. We believe there's enough interest by students who want to save money and/or are sick of bookstores.

- Long enough for a venture. Ultimately, this will go digital but that'll be a slow process. There's a lot invested in physical textbooks. It's something we're keeping our eyes on.

There are tons of "trade your used books" sites. We believe our advantage is that we simply act as a facilitator. We don't have a warehouse of books or employ people to manage inventory. We can, on a dime for the most part, start operations in Germany or India.

Hopefully our advantage keeps us from ending up like the rest of the "trade your used books" sites.

[Travis → jmathai]

It seems like what you've done is to reduce your liabilities (you hold no textbook inventory) by pushing that onto a student. If it works, awesome -- brilliant business strategy!

However, a few questions: - do you have reason to believe that there is a small entrepreneurial subset of students who want to deal with the extra hassle of shipping/receiving books for a few extra bucks? - do you think students won't realize that they can buy used, sell back, and end up ahead (versus your system)?

Have you done any customer development or validation on this? I highly recommend Steve Blank's method. Students are easy to get ahold of, and generally willing to talk to people, so it'll be a good test of your idea. Go through his customer discovery and validation steps first, before you build any more.

In short, it seems like your value add to the student who owns the book is to say "hey, rent your books and own them, make more than you otherwise would!" This implies that the other side of the transaction will be the source of this revenue. I don't see the renters getting very much value from using this system (versus buying used and selling at the end of the semester). THen again, I'm not your target, so get out there and talk to students!

[jmathai → Travis]

We've done a survey and have had positive feedback so far. We don't believe that means the idea will work because there's more friction in real life than in taking a survey. But it's given us enough motivation to determine if students will really use this system.

We hope that in time we can make it more financially viable for students. At first we'll need early adopters who buy into the idea of renting from students instead of bookstores. That seems to be an easy sell since few students aren't frustrated with the options available. The trick will be providing them with a great experience so they, in turn, become evangelists to the rest of the student population.

But yes, we share your concerns...and plan to squash them :).

[mschwar99 → gojomo]

If this is a economic winner, I would have already expected it to be done informally already by hustling undergrads... is it common?

Going only off of personal experience I frequently swapped or loaned books within my social circle. Already had trust established and knew where I could get my hands on them. Facebook app facilitating trading between established connections?

[jmathai → mschwar99]

I think a big barrier is making it easy for students to complete a transaction. Students with a social circle (fraternities, etc.) may not find as much value as students without big social circles. I had a social circle but they all needed the same books as I did.

Also, we don't expect this to be useful for every single student. We're looking to identify a niche and provide an excellent experience for them.

[manbearpig]

Just want to point out Chegg seeing as no one else has brought it up. They're a similar site and pretty big. The difference is that they hold their own inventory, and students can sell their used books to Chegg.

[jmathai → manbearpig]

We're very aware of Chegg and the $80+ million they've raised :). We believe that our model is more scalable and portable than theirs. It also carries a story that resonates with students. Students rarely enjoy the process of purchasing textbooks for class. We're aiming to make that a little better.

While Chegg has a head start on us it's very early and we look forward to crushing them :).