Chegg.com introduces buyback campaign

Chegg, called the “Netflix of book rental,” launched a buyback campaign Wednesday for students looking to sell their used books, said Tina Couch, vice president of public relations at the online company.

“Students are graduating, and they’ve got these books,” she said. “We’re trying to
encourage students to use Chegg to sell textbooks because we pay top dollar. We pay about $40 per book.”

Through the campaign, Couch said students can check the “Sell textbooks” tab on the website’s home page, http://www.chegg.com, to see if a book they want to sell will be accepted by the site.

“We have a list of preferred books,” she said. “But the trick is to check ‘Sell your books’ to see if your book is one that we’re looking for. We have 4.2 million titles in our inventory.”

By looking under the “Sell textbooks” tab, students can search the title of their book, the author’s name or the ISBN code to see if the website will buy their book, Couch said.

The website will then show an estimate of how much Chegg will pay for the book. However, if a book is in poor condition, Couch said, the site will pay the student selling it less.

“Once we get it, we’ll assess it to see what kind of condition it’s in,” Couch said.

To promote the campaign, Couch said Chegg has joined with Ashton Kutcher’s social media company, Katalyst, to create a viral web series. It will focus on how students find ways to make money, such as donating blood or collecting cans.

“Instead of all those crazy things, you guys should just sell your books back to us,” Couch said.

The videos are on YouTube on Chegg’s channel, she said.

The company wants to use the videos to reach its target audience, Couch said, It will also serve as serve as a completely different way to get the word out about the buyback campaign.

“A secondary reason is that we think it’s funny all the different ways that students try to get cash,” Couch said. “So we use the videos to kind of spoof them. You very simply could have sold your book back.”