Textbook resale sits inside a course-material market that has shifted toward rentals, digital access, free content, and lower annual spending. The latest NACS Student Watch figures report that students averaged $341 in required course-material spending in 2024-25, while earlier pricing studies show how much value can be lost or retained between new, used, and buyback transactions.
Contents
- Current student demand
- Purchasing, renting, and skipping materials
- Where students buy course materials
- Used versus new textbook pricing
- Resale and buyback economics
- Print, digital, and free content
Current student demand
The most recent figures in this collection come from NACS Student Watch 2025 and describe spring 2025 or the 2024-25 academic year. They show that textbooks and other required course materials remain a recurring student expense, even as average spending has fallen.
Students took an average of 8.7 courses in 2024-25 and purchased an average of 8.2 course materials. That purchasing level is close to one material per course, although the dataset does not identify how many purchases were new, used, rented, digital, or bundled through an access program. Average required course-material spending was $341 per student for the year, the lowest level seen in the past two decades. On a course basis, the same report put average required spending at $39 per course.
In spring 2025, 70% of students purchased at least one course material, while 15% rented at least one. These are participation measures rather than shares of all materials or total spending, so they should not be added together to estimate market size. They do show that purchasing remained much more common than renting in the reported period.
Day-one access programs were also part of the 2025 picture. Fifty-seven percent of students were satisfied with their day-one access experience, 28% were neutral, and 16% were dissatisfied. Among participants, 64% said day-one access was better than other ways of getting course materials, while 23% said it was about the same. Among non-participants, 59% thought day-one access would be a better option than other ways of obtaining materials.
Purchasing, renting, and skipping materials
NACS Student Watch 2025 reported that around one in four students decided not to acquire at least one course material. Students who skipped materials spent only $30 less on average than students who obtained all materials. That small difference suggests that skipping at least one item did not necessarily eliminate most course-material spending, but the statistic does not explain which materials students skipped or why.
The historical participation measures show a stronger role for renting in earlier years. In spring 2019, 83% of students purchased course materials, 44% rented, and 15% borrowed. In spring 2023, 69% purchased at least one course material and 25% rented at least one. These figures come from different survey years and should be read as snapshots, not as a single continuous trend line.
| Survey period | Purchased at least one | Rented at least one | Other reported behavior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2019 | 83% | 44% | 15% borrowed |
| Spring 2023 | 69% | 25% | 72% assigned at least one free or non-paid-for material |
| Spring 2025 | 70% | 15% | Around one in four skipped at least one material |
Sources: NACS Student Watch 2019, NACS Student Watch 2023, and NACS Student Watch 2025.
The 2023 report found that 72% of students were assigned at least one free or non-paid-for material during the academic year. Of those free materials, 63% came through the campus learning management system. The same report said course materials represented 24% of total spending across course materials, technology, and supplies, down from 28% the prior year.
Where students buy course materials
Campus stores remained important in the NACS Student Watch 2023 results. Among students who purchased materials, 84% bought at least some from their campus store. Forty-one percent purchased from the store’s physical location, and 43% purchased from the college store online. These channels overlap because a student could use both.
The report also measured the share of purchased course materials made through specific channels. Campus stores accounted for 56% of purchased course materials, while Amazon accounted for 18%. Those percentages describe purchased materials in that survey context; they are not estimates of every textbook transaction, resale transaction, or rental.
Older NACS data provides additional context for how buying channels have changed. In 2018-19, 79% of students reported purchasing course materials from their campus store, 46% from Amazon, 18% from a publisher website, 10% from a peer or student, and 10% from Chegg.com. In fall 2016, the corresponding reported figures were 82% for the campus store, 40% for Amazon, 8% for a peer or student, 7% for Chegg.com, and 7% for a publisher website.
Because these are survey responses and the categories may allow multiple answers, the channel percentages should not be treated as mutually exclusive market shares. They are useful for identifying reported purchasing paths, including the peer-to-peer route most directly associated with resale.
Used versus new textbook pricing
Several older studies put concrete numbers on the price differences that make textbook resale attractive. NACS’ 2016 campus-store survey reported an average new textbook price of $79. This is a historical measurement and should not be treated as a current national average.
A Government Accountability Office pricing example, identified as GAO-05-806, used a publisher-priced new book of $100. In that example, the book retailed at $129, a $29 increase, or 23%, over the publisher price. The same example reported that a used book retailed at $97, described as a $32 increase, or 33%. The supplied figures preserve the GAO example’s labels and arithmetic; they describe that example rather than a general price rule.
The GAO also reported that wholesalers typically bought used books at 50% of new retail price, while students typically paid 75% of new retail price for used books. These figures describe a resale chain with different prices at acquisition and student purchase. They do not establish that every title, edition, or condition follows those percentages.
A 2012 student-spending table from Turning the Page and Student Monitor reported an average of $112 for used printed textbooks and $133 for new printed textbooks. Used printed textbooks represented 38% of textbook spending in that table, compared with 45% for new printed textbooks. Rented printed textbooks averaged $28 and represented 10% of spending. E-book purchases averaged $14 and represented 5%, while e-book rentals averaged $5 and represented 2%. Total textbook spending averaged $292 per student in that 2012 table.
Resale and buyback economics
The U.S. PIRGs Course Correction report included a buyback comparison that illustrates the gap between student purchase prices and resale proceeds. In the comparison, the e-textbook price was $73.19, a new book retailed at $145.39, and a used book retailed at $109.04. The average used price online, including shipping, was $83.50.
The same comparison reported a bookstore buyback price of $72.69 and an online buyback price of $33.90. These are not equivalent to a guaranteed recovery rate for all textbooks: the comparison concerns the specific books and transaction conditions examined in the report. Still, the figures show why resale value depends on the route used. Selling to a bookstore may produce a different amount from selling through an online buyback service, while selling directly to another student is a separate transaction model.
| Item in the U.S. PIRGs comparison | Reported price |
|---|---|
| New book retail price | $145.39 |
| Used book retail price | $109.04 |
| Average used online price, including shipping | $83.50 |
| E-textbook price | $73.19 |
| Bookstore buyback price | $72.69 |
| Online buyback price | $33.90 |
Source: U.S. PIRGs, Course Correction.
An older McKinsey report, The future of textbooks, said used-textbook sales rose from about 30% of total textbook sales historically to about 36% by the late 1990s. This is a legacy estimate about an earlier market period, not a current resale share. It is best used as historical context for the long-running presence of used books in higher education.
Print, digital, and free content
Course-material format choices have changed alongside resale. NACS Student Watch 2025 reported that 88% of students had used digital materials for classes in the past year. In the NACS 2021 student survey, 58% reported using digital materials more that year, and 81% had taken at least one fully online course that year.
Student Monitor’s 2022 survey reported that 64% of students used eTextbooks purchased for unlimited use, while 25% rented eTextbooks for limited-time use. The survey context matters: the figures describe reported use of eTextbook types, not the total share of all course materials.
Print remained a meaningful preference in older NACS results. In 2019, 26% of students preferred a strictly print textbook, and 47% preferred print of some type when print-only and print-with-digital formats were combined. In spring 2015, 46% preferred print course materials. NACS Student Watch 2015 also reported that digital course-material use was rising by about 3% during the 2014-15 academic year.
Free content was widespread in the 2019 survey. Eighty-nine percent of students reported using some type of free content in spring 2019, and 22% reported downloading free content. The report said downloading free content was up 100% from spring 2016. In 2023, online homework assignments were used by 80% of students, up from 71% the prior year.
The scope of the underlying surveys also varies. NACS Student Watch 2023 collected responses from approximately 14,500 students across 36 colleges and universities. NACS Student Watch 2021 surveyed approximately 11,800 students from 39 two- and four-year colleges and universities. A separate NACS Faculty Watch 2023 table reported 1,017 faculty responses across 20 two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
These sample descriptions help frame the statistics: the figures summarize reported experiences from defined survey groups and periods. They do not, by themselves, provide a current national count of resale transactions or a forecast of future textbook prices.