You may recall last year (around this time), Aspen proposed eliminating the sale of its popular Dukeminier Property book, and would only allow students to lease the book. After some uproar (a lot of it here), Aspen backed off and gave students the option to own the physical textbook, or rent the textbook and get a subscription to the online “Casebook Connect” platform. The latter option would be cheaper.

I received an email from my Aspen representative notifying me that there is a new proposal for 2015. Whether you buy the textbook for $229.95 or rent it for $177.95, you will receive the “Casebook Connect” subscription.

If I had to guess, offering the “Casebook Connect” was not enough of an incentive to get students to rent the book, so now it is being offered to everyone, with the hopes that students and teachers will adopt it. So basically, the only difference is that you save $50 by returning it at the end of the year. Here is the pricing on BarristerBooks.com. If the resale value of the book is more than $50, I don’t know what you gain by going for the rental version.