Inside Higher Ed reports today on the expansion of major college bookstores in the textbook rental market.

Barnes and Noble, which operates 636 campus bookstores, announced yesterday that in light of a “tremendous response from students and faculty,” it was expanding a pilot rental program that it ran in three stores last semester to 25 stores this semester.

Richard T. Hull, Executive Director at Text and Academic Authors Association, Inc., added a comment to the story:

Textbook authors would be far better served by an individual copy’s being rented and rerented. Royalties are paid by publishers to authors on the basis of first sale only; used textbook sales earn neither publisher nor author a dime. The repeated rental of an individual copy brings in income to both publisher and author.