The following table summarizes the top buyback sites during the months of December and January. Position is determined by the number of clicks to each site by BookScouter users, which is a good indicator of how competitive each site’s pricing is during this busy season.
I get a couple dozen emails each week from people asking how much their books without an ISBN are worth. Unfortunately, the current website is only useful for books with an ISBN. The ISBN obviously makes it easy to compare prices from multiple websites. I’m looking at ways to tackle this problem of finding the value of non-ISBN books. However, I don’t have any experience evaluating these types of books. I’d like to get in touch with a few book sellers who are knowledgeable about them and try to put something together. Please send me an email or use the Contact Form if you think that you can provide some insight.
The site had a bit of a jump in traffic over the last two days. I’ve had one email from somebody that noted learning about it on a television spot, so that seems to have been the cause. The extra traffic has caused a little bit of slowness on the site, but not anything too severe.
That is also the first mention of BookScouter on a television program that I’m aware of, so I’d be interested if anybody could provide any details, including what channel and market it was in, or a way to view it online.
I was recently interviewed by Kristian Storm for an article on BookThink.com. Kristian runs lowestcostbooks.com and has been reselling books for many years. His article is intended for book sellers who deal primarily with higher-end collectible books, so he recommends using BookScouter to sell some slow-moving books. The article includes a good review of some of the top vendors that he recommends using as well.
The full article is available at http://bookthink.com/0152/152amaz1.htm
I’m about to release the iPhone app and realized that I need a logo to use as the icon. I’ve started a logo design contest at 99designs.com. View the designs here
If you are creative, feel free to submit a design. Otherwise, let me know if one of the logos really stands out to you.
I’ve just finished adding FairBooks.com to the site so that their prices will show up for searches. BookScouter now compares prices from 44 different buyback vendors.
We are excited to announce the new Bookscouter Android app. To get started you need to go to the Android Market, search Bookscouter, and download the app for FREE. When opening the Bookscouter app the first time you will be prompted to download a barcode scanner. The app uses your phone’s digital camera to scan the barcodes so the scanner is a must. When using the app you can either scan the ISBN or type it into the search bar. Let us know how it’s working!
I’ve just finished adding two new vendors to the site, bringing to total number of searchable sites up to 43. Moola4Books is a company based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana that has been buying and selling books since 2008. The initial pricing that I’ve see looks like these guys have pretty competitive pricing.
Buyback101.com is based out of Florida and specializes in K-12 books, so they may buy some of those books in quantities that other textbook companies won’t.
I’ve had a good amount of communication with both companies prior to getting them enabled today. Both seem very eager to provide excellent customer service and to provide accurate and prompt payments. I’d encourage you to give them a try when you see the opportunity. And please remember to leave feedback once you have completed a transaction or two.
It seems that students across the country are complaining about the rising cost of textbooks. However, we believe that students who buy and sell their books online can pay less for their books than ever before. There is more and more competition with companies who want to buy those used books. The competition is so fierce, in fact, that you can often sell a book back for almost as much as you paid for it. We’d like to gather some data from real students who are currently in college. If you are a student, or know a student, please submit the following: