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The BookScouter Team

BookScouter.com is a book price comparison web app. We help you BUY, SELL, or RENT books πŸ“š at the best price with a single search! πŸ“™πŸ”ŽπŸ›’

Mobile Site Issues Resolved

News & Updates By June 15, 2010 Last Updated on September 23, 2021 by The BookScouter Team No Comments

I had previously been running the mobile site and the iPhone application off of an older server. That server had some problems yesterday and the mobile site was down for some period of time until I got that fixed this morning. I have had plans to move those pieces over to the newer servers, but the problems from yesterday gave it the urgency needed to get that done. The good news is that the mobile site and iPhone apps now use the same infrastructure as the main websites which is more scalable and reliable. Additionally, some of the newer vendors which weren’t available on those platforms are now available as well.
I apologize for the inconvenience caused by those being inaccessible, but they should be working well now along with some other fixes that have been planned as well.

Amazon Buyback Added – 40 Merchants Now Searchable

News & Updates By May 17, 2010 Last Updated on January 19, 2011 by Olivia Smith No Comments

I’ve just finished adding Amazon.com’s Textbook Trade-in prices to the site. The service is pretty new, and I’ve not heard much feedback about it yet. Beware that they offer payment ONLY through Amazon.com gift cards. My understanding is that they pay credit directly to your account, so I don’t know if there is any way to sell the gift card and convert it to cash. I believe that the buyback program is actually run by a third-party and not by Amazon directly

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

All about books By May 15, 2010 Last Updated on August 10, 2023 by Abigail White Tags: No Comments

What is it for, and where did it come from?

W. H. Smith, who was the largest single book retailer in Great Britain, became computerized and wanted a standard numbering system for all the books it carried. They constructed the Standard Book Numbering system (SBN), which was introduced in 1967. In 1970 the ISO, International Organization for Standardization, which consisted of several countries, adopted this standard system. It evolved into the ISBN numbering system and is now the standard in approximately 150 countries.

BookScouter Pro: Historic Buyback Price Tool

News & Updates By May 11, 2010 Last Updated on January 18, 2023 by Olivia Smith Tags: No Comments

One of our BookScouter Pro Tools is aΒ Historic Buyback Price tool that allows you to analyze past book prices. This tool can be used to understand pricing trends for a given book or collection of books. It can assist you in determining the best time to sell your books. Here are a few examples:

Site Performance

News & Updates By May 4, 2010 Last Updated on November 24, 2021 by The BookScouter Team No Comments

This is probably the busiest week of the year for this site. BookScouter traffic has more than tripled since last year at this time. Last week I added an extra server to give the site some more capacity. I’m happy that all of the servers have been performing well!Β The problem now is all of the websites whose prices this site is searching are also getting stressed. It is their busiest time of the year as well, and some of them aren’t handling the added volume as well as others. That means that sometimes when BookScouter tries to look up prices on their sites, it goes really slowly. That in-turn causes prices to show up slower on BookScouter. I’ve tried to account for slow sites, and in general it does a good job, but I’m occasionally seeing issues where it still goes slowly. I’m investigating those more closely to see if I can prevent the cases that are still getting through.

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