Education materials publisher McGraw-Hill Education, US, and online textbook rental company Chegg.com have announced the launch of a pilot shared-revenue programme. Under the initiative, McGraw-Hill will provide new print textbooks directly to Chegg for its online rental business. This first-of-its-kind collaboration will provide McGraw-Hill with a new revenue stream and allow Chegg to expand the supply of textbooks that students can rent from its service.
Traditionally, McGraw-Hill has received payment only for the initial purchase of a textbook by a distributor or bookstore. These channel partners typically resold the products to students and bought them back at the end of the semester to resell again. Under this agreement, McGraw-Hill will share in the rental revenues throughout the life of each McGraw-Hill title in the pilot programme.
Online textbook rentals have been growing in popularity for years, and certain McGraw-Hill titles have been available through Chegg's online textbook rental service since Chegg began nationwide operations in 2007. This agreement creates a first-ever direct working relationship between a publisher and textbook rental company, wherein Chegg will source all of its rental inventory directly from McGraw-Hill. The agreement also creates a rental-revenue-sharing pilot covering a series of 25 McGraw-Hill Higher Education titles available for rental on http://www.chegg.com/.
In a similar move, higher education publisher Cengage Learning recently announced that it will enter the print textbook rental market with the Fall 2009 launch of CengageBrain.com - a single destination providing students with the choice to rent or purchase the company's diverse array of learning solutions. CengageBrain.com is the latest innovation from Cengage Learning, the first higher education publisher to offer a full-choice, direct-to-consumer online retail outlet and the first to sell e-textbooks by the chapter.
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