BookFinder.com Journal

Selling textbooks, the great price equalizer

When I was a university student I was price conscious about everything I did, from entertainment to food to (obviously) my textbooks.  This is one of the great constants, we know that price is the number one most important issue for students when buying their textbooks.

If you want to ensure you are paying the lowest possible amount for your textbooks you need to decide if you plan on keeping that textbook.  If the book is in one of your core subjects and doesn't change a huge amount from year to year you might want to keep the book to reference once you get into the job market (ie: Statistics or Calculus) but if it's for an elective you are probably going to sell it at at the end of the semester.  Once you decide this you can chose what your options are and students essentially have three options: 

• Buy their book and keep it for reference
• Buy their book and sell it at the end of the semester
• Rent their book

Buying the book and keeping it is easy, search BookFinder.com and pick the lowest price.  Follow these tips and you are golden.

If you are not keeping the book you need to consider the total cost of buying and selling your textbook and compare that final price to the rental cost. Because really a rental book is just the same as one that you bought and sold, the rental company just wraps the whole final cost into one transaction for you.

For example lets look at Chemistry: The Central Science by Bruce Bursten.

Today I could buy this book used from Alibris for $72.00 or New from AbeBooks for $75.47 or to rent the book for a semester it would cost $75.33.  So even with just this information, you would buy.

Now if you include the buyback price for this book (AbeBooks will give $80.25), you find that buying the book you MAKE $4.78 and if you rent it will COST you $75.33.

This is a fairly extreme example, and the buyback price will probably shift between now and the end of the semester but it shows that you have to compare apples to apples when looking at textbook rental.  And even if the buyback price goes down by $20 you are still saving. 

This is NOT to say that rentals are bad, there are many instances that a textbook rental will save you money and is a great option but if you want to save the money you have to do the math.

BookFinder.com saves students 60% on Textbooks

It's back to school time for college students, they've registered for classes, figured out their housing and now it's time to think about their textbooks.  This is often a huge expense for students, the Student Public Interest Research Group's Make textbooks affordable campaign reports that students spend an average of $900 each year on textbooks, but much of this cost is avoidable.  Students can use BookFinder.com to help reduce their textbook costs.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jennie Kushner from the University of Alabama newspaper (The Crimson White), she was asking what students should do to help shave down their textbook costs. 

I explained that buying their books early, inquiring about old editions, and buying used textbooks were the three easiest things that a student could do to save money but in the end they should compare prices and shop around.  She obviously took my advice to heart because she picked a bundle of books and compared prices on BookFinder.com to her college bookstore and found that BookFinder.com would save 60% over the college bookstore.

Five books covering a wide variety of subjects from the SUPe Store’s Tutwiler location totaled $469.30 without taxes. Using BookFinder.com the same books totaled $184.09, including shipping. That is a total savings of $285.21. - Crimson White

The one thing that Ms. Kushner forgot to mention in her article was that while textbook rentals can be a very powerful savings tool, and that we highly recommend considering them, when you compare the price of a textbook rental to the price of buying the textbook you need to factor in the resale price you will receive when you sell the textbook at the end of your semester.

Many people forget about this because college bookstores are famous for paying pennies on the dollar for used textbooks but now that selling textbooks online, or textbook buyback, has become commonplace online students are able to get a good chunk of their money back.  I will do the math on this in a post next week and show how to make the most of our textbook buyback marketplace, where you compare offers from several textbook merchants who are all competing to buy your textbook back from you.

Search BookFinder.com to find your Textbooks.

How Swine Flu showed publishing the way

Score one for eBooks as a learning tool.  Jason Boog over at the GalleyCat blog made mention of what I consider to be a major advantage for students in cutting edge fields like Medicine.  Instantly updated learning material.

When the publisher Little Brown issued an eBook only update about the H1N1 virus to their title "The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child" they explicitly showed that the publishers now have a way to combat the lag times of traditional publishing, they don't even have to abandon print editions. 

By simply giving purchasers access to a continuously updated electronic edition a publisher can ensure a textbook buyer that they will have completely up to date and relevant information about their subject despite any advances that may occur.  They could package the text like software giving you the base text and two years worth of updates with the first purchase.  After the term the student/teacher/professional could opt for further updates for an aditional licence fee, keep the product as is, or buy the next edition.

This could also help reduce the number of new editions that publishers need to produce allowing them to move towards something more resonable like a 5 year publishing cycle for textbooks.  The publisher is rewarded financially for keeping their text up to date, professionals no longer have to cross reference between texts and monthly journals, and students could be less crippled by debt.

Obviously this is less of a concern for some fields (I am constantly aggravated by the parade of new Calculus editions being produced despite the fundamentals remaining unchanged for centuries... but I digress), but for fast changing sciences like Medicine this is a huge development.  Now we just have to see how it will be used.

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

Affordability of textbooks and college

Greetings BookFinder.com Journal readers. My name is Scott Laming and I am the newest addition to the BookFinder.com team. To start things off I thought I would add a few postings to the Journal to start to get to know you. I thought I would talk a bit about current events in the book world and about textbooks, as it is that time of year again.

Yesterday while reading the news I saw this article which revealed that the cost of education in the US has gotten so out of control that the only state to receive a passing grade when it comes to affordability is California, and even they only scored a C-. Worse still was the comment that less than a decade ago only three states received F`s.

I remember when I was going to university a tuition freeze was removed part way though my schooling and the price for classes started to shoot up 20% a year. Thankfully I only had two years left in my degree at that point so I was able to finish school while maintaining some semblance of a budget but for students coming after me I know a lot of them came out with their finances hurting pretty badly.

While all of this is the farthest thing from good news for anyone currently attending university it does drive home the point that you have to save money where you can; pick the low hanging fruit as it were. I am sure that most of you know that a quick trip to BookFinder.com is a simple and fast way to make sure you are getting the most for your money, at least when it comes to textbooks. Even if it turns out that your local college book store has a better price, the three minutes spent on BookFinder.com will at least give you the piece of mind in knowing that you did find the best price for your textbooks...

[Now reading: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama]

Posted by Scott

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

"Custom" textbooks cost big bucks

We’ve been hearing students grumble about the increasing number of “custom” textbooks being required on US college campuses. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal takes custom textbooks down a few notches, exposing hidden royalty payments, and the frustration that they cost.

“College students, already struggling with soaring tuition bills and expenses, are encountering yet another financial hit: Publishers and schools are working together to produce ‘custom’ textbooks that can limit students’ use of the money-saving trade in used books. And in a controversial twist, some academic departments are sharing in the profits from these texts. The University of Alabama, for instance, requires freshman composition students at its main campus to buy a $59.35 writing textbook titled ‘A Writer’s Reference,’ by Diana Hacker. The spiral-bound book is nearly identical to the same ‘A Writer’s Reference’ that goes for $30 in the used-book market and costs about $54 new. The only difference in the Alabama version: a 32-page section describing the school’s writing program — which is available for free on the university’s Web site. This version also has the University of Alabama’s name printed across the top of the front cover, and a notice on the back that reads: ‘This book may not be bought or sold used.’”

Read the full article…

Posted by Anirvan

Save 54% on textbooks at BookFinder.com

We’ve been adding more textbook sources on BookFinder.com, leading to even lower prices on college textbooks.

We did a survey of six sample courselists from three U.S. universities, checking prices at local campus bookstores, and comparing them to the prices we found on BookFinder.com; we were happily surprised by the results.

There are substantial savings buying a semester’s worth of textbooks from BookFinder.com:

• $175.75 (54%) saved vs. buying the cheapest copies at local campus stores
• $278.69 (65%) saved vs. buying new books at local campus stores

Courselist	Campus store		BookFinder.com cheapest	Savings vs. campus store new		Savings vs. campus store cheapest
	New	Cheapest		$	%	$	%
Iowa State “fuzzy” Econ 101, History 222, Comm Studies 102, Math 8	$488.00	$365.80	$132.23	$355.77	73%	$233.57	64%
Iowa State “techie” Engl 101C, Chem 160, Math 140, Geol 100	$428.40	$321.20	$86.89	$341.51	80%	$234.31	73%
UC Berkeley pre-computer sci Engg 10, Phil 12A, Engl 31AC, CompSci 61A	$416.05	$322.40	$169.46	$246.59	59%	$152.94	47%
UC Berkeley possible-premed Bio 1B, Stat 131, Spanish 1, English 25	$479.65	$374.40	$185.93	$293.72	61%	$188.47	50%
Duke art/classics ArtHist 70 & 103, Vis Arts 54, Relig 20S	$469.93	$353.00	$184.21	$285.72	61%	$168.79	48%
Duke political science / policy Econ 49S, HealthPol 111, PoliSci 101, Stat 10	$290.43	$218.00	$141.59	$148.84	51%	$76.41	35%
Average of all courselists	$428.74	$325.80	$150.05	$278.69	65%	$175.75	54%

[Now reading The World to Come by Dara Horn]

Posted by Anirvan

Top resource for college students

We were happy to see BookFinder.com cited in a number of recent lists of useful resources for college students…

#3 among “25 Essential Web Resources for Researchers and Students” :

“If you are looking for any kind of book, whether it is rare or out-of-print, specific edition - You will find it at Bookfinder. Over 125 millions book titles to search, you can actually buy new and old-books from this site. They achieve by doing a search through every major catalog available online.”

#7 among the “Top 10 Back to School Tools for the Organized Student”:

“Feel like you got hit over the head with a baseball bat when you leave the campus bookstore? Find the best deals on textbooks at BookFinder.com.”

#8 among “12 Super Web Apps For College Student Success In 2008”:

“Bookfinder - Never look anywhere else to find a textbook that you need. This site searches the entire internet and shows you the best price for what you’re looking for.”

One of the “Ten Web Sites Guaranteed to Make Your School Semester Easier”:

“A trip to the campus bookstore can end up exceding the cost of a month’s rent, but searching countless bookselling Web sites is a tedious process. So before you cough up a few hundo and force yourself to eat a semester of Ramen so you can afford that spring-break trip, check out BookFinder.com. BookFinder searches more than 100,000 booksellers worldwide (including popular sites like Amazon, BookByte.com, and Half.com) for any book, whether it’s new, used, or out of print. And because BookFinder is simply an aggregator, you order directly from the retailer; there’s no markup for its services. We liked that your search results come up in two columns: Used and New.”

One of the “Five ways to tech-out your college lifestyle”:

“While the interface seems a little dated, BookFinder will save you tons of time and money. Simply type in a book you’re looking for and the site will find you the best price the internet has to offer. There’s no longer a need to search a ton of websites (or get ripped off by Norris) to get the most for your buck.”

Top writing tool among “The Most Helpful Web Tools for Students”:

“A one-stop ecommerce search engine that searches over 125 million books for sale — new, used, rare, out-of-print, and textbooks. Save your time and money by searching every major catalog online, find out which booksellers are offering the best prices and selection. When you find a book you like, you can buy it directly from the original seller; BookFinder never charges a markup. If you are one of those poor students who struggles for money, this site is for you. You can compare prices that are offered by different sellers and pick up the cheapest item.”

One of the resources cited in a “Back to School Productivity Roundup” :

BookFinder: Compare prices on 125 million new and used books

Posted by Anirvan