BookFinder.com Journal

BookFinder.com helps you sell your textbooks

So last week I mentioned that the cost of education is becoming more expensive, and that buying your textbooks doesn’t have to add to this burden. Today I want to give you some more good news.

This week as you finish writing your final exams (assuming you are a student and that you're not one of the lucky ones who already finished) you have more options then ever when it comes to selling off your old textbooks.

Your options are no longer limited to selling your books back to the college bookstore, consignment, or posting on notice boards; a growing number of online booksellers are engaging in online textbook buyback and once again BookFinder.com is here to help.

This system works almost exactly like buying books online but in reverse. You simply enter the ISBN's of your textbooks into the BookFinder.com buyback search and you will be shown offers from multiple online book buyers. You can compare these prices, just as you do when buying books online and if you are happy with the prices being offered you can choose to sell any one or all of your books.

All you have to do is pack the books up in a box or mailing envelope, print out your packing list(s) and pre-paid shipping label(s) and then mail the books off. Then when the book buyer receives the books they send you your money. All of the BookFinder.com buyback partners pay the shipping costs and there is no buyback window so you can sell your books anytime.

By checking the buyback prices online and at the college bookstore you are sure to get the best price for your books with the added bonus of not having to wait around for consignment sales.

Currently buyback is only available within the United States, however we are working hard to find buyback partners in other countries.

So go ahead and try the BookFinder.com textbook buyback and let us know how you like it!

[Now reading: Going Solo by Roald Dahl]

Posted by Scott

New books, cheaper than used

For the third time this week, I’ve bought a new book on BookFinder.com for less than the price of the cheapest used copy (including shipping).

My city is working on a climate action plan, which residents are being asked to respond to. I’m doing some background reading about the issues, and as part of that, I purchased two recent British books on the topic via BookFinder.com; in both cases, the price of a new copy was less than that of the used. For example, I bought Kyoto2 by Oliver Tickell for $17.45, far less than other new offers (e.g. $24.94 from Amazon.com), and a dollar less than the cheapest used copies. (All prices are postpaid to the U.S.)

My wife and I are trying to plan a vacation together, but we don’t know really where to go (our vacations invariably revolve around visiting family). So we went to the local library last week and checked out a lot of travel books; among them, we both liked Make the Most of Your Time on Earth, a book of travel ideas. We just used BookFinder.com to buy a $16.47 copy from ValoreBooks, $1.06 less than the cheapest used copy, and $3.36 dollars cheaper than the Amazon.com new price.

[Now Reading: Collected Plays by Mahesh Dattani]

Posted by Anirvan

Journalist saves 49% on textbooks with BookFinder.com

Honolulu journalist and grad student Kim Fassler shared her experiences buying textbooks on BookFinder.com this semester:

“As a grad student returning to school for the first time in two years, I met the textbook challenge head-on as classes started last week…[t]hat meant 12 books, including one macroeconomics and one microeconomics textbook (notoriously expensive)….I…hopped on BookFinder.com, which offered TONS of help.

She found some huge savings on BookFinder.com:

“Number of classes that required books: 4
Number of books purchased: 12
Grand total: $333.15
Total, if I purchased all new books on Amazon.com: $655.52”

She continues:

“For those students going back to school, I’d highly recommend BookFinder.com, which shows you prices from many different book sites, including Amazon, Half, AbeBooks, Alibris and Overstock. (It’s like the Kayak.com of textbook shopping.)”

Thanks, Kim. We’re working hard to offer students bigger and easier textbook savings.

[Now Reading: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow]

Posted by Anirvan

Save up to 88% on textbooks at BookFinder.com

We do frequent price surveys to get a sense of what textbooks US college students are buying, and I’m perpetually astounded at the high price of textbooks. Last I checked, textbook prices were growing at four times the rate of inflation, costing students almost a thousand dollars a year.

I’d love to say that BookFinder.com is the magic answer to students’ textbook woes, but it’s not. There are larger systemic issues involved here: lack of adequate cost data available to faculty, the uptick in the publication of new editions, the bundling of often-unused add-on products, and increased use of techniques that make used textbooks largely non-resaleable (one-time-use online services, custom publishing). And sometimes, just old-fashioned price hikes.

Given those odds, using BookFinder.com is a pretty useful survival strategy for cost-conscious students trying to save on textbooks. Here’s a roundup of some of the deals we found.

Fall 2008 college textbook savings at BookFinder.com
Iowa State, English 10 College bookstore new: $216 BookFinder.com: $49.86 Savings: $166.14 (77%) Iowa State, Sociology 134 College bookstore new: $154.30 BookFinder.com: $26.94 Savings: $127.36 (83%)	Duke, Political Science 141D College bookstore new: $256.95 BookFinder.com: $115.14 Savings: $150.81 (57%) Duke, Jewish Studies 100 College bookstore new: $207.19 BookFinder.com: $74.53 Savings: $132.66 (64%)	UC Berkeley, Computer Science 61A College bookstore new: $210.75 BookFinder.com: $95.77 Savings: $114.98 (55%) UC Berkeley, Sociology 5 College bookstore new: $96.75 BookFinder.com: $48.64 Savings: $48.11 (64%)

So yeah, go ahead, use BookFinder.com for textbooks; we can help students find great prices. But making real change takes effort, and civic, student, and consumer organizing—which is where the Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs comes in. Run by a group of state PIRG organizations, the Campaign’s been doing excellent work documenting and analyzing the issue, providing access to research, and trying to push and track textbook affordability policies and legislation. The textbook affordability measures in HR4137 are a start, but there’s much more to do.

[Now reading: What is the What by Dave Eggers]

Posted by Anirvan

Amazon.com purchasing AbeBooks

Amazon.com is purchasing AbeBooks. As a long-time industry-watcher, I think this is pretty big news, certainly the most significant acquisition in the online used/rare book space to date—and yet not a lot may change.

AbeBooks will join the list of standalone Amazon.com subsidiaries, including Audible, shopbop.com, the Internet Movie Database, and Digital Photo Review.

When AbeBooks acquired BookFinder.com, there was some concern from well-wishers that they’d shut us down or make us skew our results—but neither happened, or was even an option. We’re still a small independently-managed operation, but now with more resources to draw upon.

It’s interesting seeing AbeBooks go through the same process as we did, but with Amazon.com. I know enough about the deal to be very confident that AbeBooks will follow a similar model: being run independently, but with the ability to draw on Amazon.com for help when they need it. And as for BookFinder.com? For better or for worse, the change doesn’t impact us at all. (Though personally, I wouldn’t mind if we got some free Audible subscriptions out of all this.)

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More coverage…

From AbeBooks and Amazon.com:

• Press release
• AbeBooks blog

Reactions from AbeBooks friends and family:

• Boris Wertz, former COO, AbeBooks
• Tim Spalding, Librarything

In the media:

• Seatle Post-Intelligencer blog
• Victoria Times-Colonist
• Vancouver Sun
• Motley Fool
• TechCrunch
• TechVibes
• ReadWriteWeb

Posted by Anirvan

BookFinder.com's building blocks

I’ve been enjoying reading Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, Alex Wright’s new book on information management history (mostly from a European/Islamic POV).

There’s a lot there, some of which I knew, but much that I was unfamiliar with. I particularly enjoyed learning about the history of some of the concepts that the BookFinder.com uses every day.

In the 1830s, an exiled Italian revolutionary named Anthony Panizzi was hired to revamp the British Library’s cataloging system, where he wrote that “a book is a particular edition of a work, a part of a complex web of editions and translations, and that catalog users should be able to see these relationships even as they search for a particular book.”

Per Wright, Panizzi “introduced the distinction between a ‘book’ and a ‘work’—that is, between the physical edition and the intellectual property encoded within.”

We take this distinction to heart. The difference between an abstract work, a particular edition, and a specific copy of a book is a fundamental part of the way we think about books at BookFinder.com. Unlike most book search/shopping sites (from Amazon.com on down), we try to have users search at the work level, and drill down to specific editions and copies as late as possible. We may have Panizzi to thank for articulating these ideas 170 years ago.

[Now reading: The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie]

Posted by Anirvan

Deals on BookFinder.com

BookFinder.com continues to offer huge savings on mainstream current bestsellers. We periodically run price surveys to get a sense of prices across our bookseller network. Here's what we found during our most current survey:

Recent Bestsellers	List Price	BookFinder.com	Savings
Harry Potter 7 by J. K. Rowling	$34.99	$6.73 including shipping	81%
The Appeal by John Grisham	$27.95	$10.09 including shipping	64%
You: On A Diet by Roizin & Oz	$25.00	$7.98 including shipping	68%
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne	$23.95	$11.50 including shipping	52%
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown	$9.99	$3.60 including shipping	64%
Good to Great by Jim Collins	$27.50	$12.00 including shipping	56%
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini	$25.95	$11.99 including shipping	54%
Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner	$27.95	$13.98 including shipping	50%
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle	$24.95	$12.69 including shipping	49%
Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman	$23.95	$11.46 including shipping	52%
Total	$252.18	$102.02 including shipping	60%
All numbers from an April 15, 2008 price survey on BookFinder.com. These books cost $236.61 at a leading chain bookstore the same day.

Posted by Anirvan

JustBooks.nl: new Dutch site launched

We’re excited to launch the public beta of JustBooks.nl, BookFinder.com’s new Dutch boekzoekmachine, and the latest addition to the JustBooks network of European book comparison shopping engines.

Like BookFinder.com, JustBooks.nl helps readers find great deals and hard-to-find titles from across a vast international network of booksellers. Spreekt u Nederlands? Please take a look, and let us know what you think!

We’ve also taken JustBooks.de and JustBooks.co.uk out of beta; they now feature improved search technology and more searchable booksellers.

(Big thanks to Anita, Giovanni, and the rest of the team for all your hard work.)

Posted by Anirvan

Persistence pays

I enjoyed reading Craig Hodgkins’ accounts of his experiences trying to track down two hard-to-find books from the 1940s and 1950s:

• How I Finally Satisfied My Wife with a Lavender Blue Strawberry Choo Choo Train
• Books: Frank Fenton and “A Place in the Sun”

His tools include IMDB, Google, Loganberry Books’ Stump the Bookseller, BookFinder.com, and an amazing amount of persistence.

[Now Reading: Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Largest State by Joe Domanick]

Posted by Anirvan

Big textbook savings

Working in a college town (Berkeley, California), we’re pretty aware of the changing of the semesters. As textbook season starts up again, I wanted to figure out just how much students could save buying books via BookFinder.com.

I started with a basic UC Berkeley first semester course list: Biology 1 (General Biology), Political Science 2 (Introduction to Comparative Politics), Chemistry 4A (General Chemistry & Quantitative Analysis), and History 7A (United States History to 1865). There were 13 textbooks assigned between the four courses.

I went down to our local campus area discount student bookstore yesterday, trying to see how much a hypothetical UC Berkeley student might spend on textbooks this semester. The cheapest possible total for 13 textbooks: $517 (or $635 if one bought only new books).

Then I checked BookFinder.com. The total, including shipping: $272.45, for the same set of books. That’s a real-life savings of $244.55, or 47%.

Where was BookFinder.com when I was a student?

Here’s what I learned:

• The best deals were spread across 5 different online stores/marketplaces; in my sample, they turned out to be AbeBooks, Amazon Marketplace, A1Books, Biblio.com, and Amazon.ca (though that’ll vary based on the books you’re searching for, and the sites’ current inventories. Using BookFinder.com saved a lot of money vs. going only to a single store/marketplace.
• For both of the most expensive books, the cheapest price available was in a brand-new international edition (one from Southeast Asia, another from Canada).
• It seems obvious, but the biggest net savings were on the most expensive books. Buying only the 2 most expensive books online would save $136.14. Relying on BookFinder.com for all 5 textbooks that cost over $25 at the campus store would save $213.

So to summarize:

• BookFinder.com’s a good way to find textbook deals online
• If you’re shopping online, it’s better to price-compare across multiple marketplaces, rather than to buy all your books from any one place
• If you’re busy and want quick savings, look online for your most expensive books

Posted by Anirvan