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 ISBN scanner 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:
The following sites were the most popular in May and June 2010 according to the number of visitors sent from BookScouter. This is a good indication of which websites offered the highest prices during the month.
When it comes to selling books back at the end of the semester, some may settle for the bookstore’s low price because they don’t want to worry about it any longer. But for those of you who are willing to search around and find the highest price, Bookscouter.com is the place to go.
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.
At least one person per day asks how to sell their old or rare books. For these, Bookscouter.com is not able to provide vendors since there is no ISBN number associated with them. However we do provide alternate sources to find your books highest rated value.
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.
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