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! 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.

I’ve just finished adding 5 new buyback sites in time for the busy season. More competition means higher prices for everybody. That brings the total number of vendors searchable on the site to 39, and 52 sites are available to have feedback submitted.

• MyBookCart.com
• BookStores.com
• Bookit Buyback
• FreeTextbooks.com
• TextbookRecycling.com

I’ve just added a few more new features to the site. Users now have the ability to create an account at BookScouter.com and customize the list of vendors that are searched. This should make it so that you only see the vendors that you’re actually interested in selling to. You can still click a link to view all of the vendors as well. If you are not logged in, then some of the most reliable sites are shown by default. I’ve also fixed a few problems that people have let me know about. We Buy Textbooks recently changed their site, so prices weren’t being displayed, and that has been corrected.