With the back to school season in full swing, CampusBooks.com announced today that a record number of students are buying textbooks online this year. According to Alex Neal, President and Founder of CampusBooks, website traffic and online textbook sales have more than doubled over last year.
According to Neal, "Our business has grown exponentially over the last three years. We are seeing more and more students buying textbooks online. As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study pointed out last week, textbook prices have been rising at twice the rate of inflation. The average first year college student now spends over $ 900 on textbooks. Coupled with the fact that college students today are very Internet savvy, and it’s easy to see why more and more students are buying books online."
College textbook costs have been rising rapidly due to the widespread industry practice of "bundling" (where book publishers bundle their textbooks with software CDs and other extras and then mark up the price significantly). Additionally, new editions of the same textbook are released virtually every year, with little new content but higher retail prices. This practice discourages the sale of used textbooks that undermine textbook publisher profits.
"The best way to save money on your textbooks is to buy used," adds Mr. Neal. "It’s like buying a used car. Let the original buyer take the depreciation hit, and get more books for your buck. Also buy older editions if possible. Check with your instructor first, but typically the content of a new edition is not much different from the previous edition. The biggest difference is the price."
CampusBooks is a free online textbook price comparison shopping service that searches over 40 bookstores for the lowest prices on new and used textbooks. The site searches all the top bookstores on the Internet, including Amazon, BarnesandNoble and many others. Additionally, CampusBooks operates a used book marketplace where students can sell their books directly to other students.
According to Neal, "The average student saved over $ 180 buying their books on our site, and sold their books for $ 24 more on average than what they would have gotten at the campus bookstore buyback. Using the Internet to buy and sell books is really a win-win for college students."
Mr. Neal founded CampusBooks Inc. in 1998 during the height of the dot com boom. Originally an online textbook reseller, CampusBooks evolved into a textbook comparison shopping site in 2000 and continues to grow.
For information: http://www.campusbooks.com or
Contact: help@campusbooks.com
Phone: 858-569-5009
Fax: 858-569-0359
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