We have completely overhauled Bookspy to make it easier than ever to find the lowest price on the books you are searching for. We have added a new book chat, the ability to leave your own reviews, and smarter search features. Stay tuned for new tools for book scouts, including and iPhone app!
Come check out the NEW Bookspy.Net!
Buying textbooks can be quite the daunting task for college students of any level, from freshman to last year graduate student. They always put a drain on your money when starting the semester, without promise of actually getting use out of the book! Many college book stores no longer offer a rental program. In addition, most college bookstores only carry a limited number of used books, and offer a paltry amount on book buybacks.
You can save a lot of money if you buy used textbooks online for the semester, as long as you know where to go, and provided that you know well enough in advance what books you need. I have provided a list of websites and descriptions below where you can find cheaper than college bookstore copies.
Book price comparison
If you are intent on actually buying your book, the first place I would recommend to try is a book price comparison site. These sites search through dozens, if not more, online bookstores and return to you a list of the lowest prices available. This is much quicker and faster than going to each site individually. The downside is that sometimes the data provided to these sites is not up to date, and you may have to do a little manual tracking. Overall the best option for starting a search though. Below I have listed a suggestion based on past experience. Of course we are biased to our very own BookSpy.net, but there are many others however, just do a google search. We try to stay ahead of the game however, and will respond promptly and quickly to any suggestions you may have to improve the search service.
BookSpy.Net Your Text Book Price Comparsion Engine Search by ISBN, title, author, or other keywords. Nice, easy to use book search site. Can rate and recommend books, see previous customer reviews, details about the book, and more.
Major bookstores
The other option in buying your books is to visit all of the major online booksellers themselves. Most online book retailers have a marketplace section where third party sellers can sell used and new copies of the book you are looking for, often significantly cheaper than retail value, probably saving upwards of 80% in some cases. Keep in mind however that most book price comparison sites search through the marketplace sellers a s well! The major online booksellers are:
Amazon.com The most well known place to buy used and new books. Often very cheap, but not always the cheapest, especially on textbooks. A good starting place though.
Half.com Half.com Is quickly gaining ground on Amazon as far as number of books offered. Similar pricing to Amazon, may be able to find cheaper textbooks.
Alibris.com Another fairly large site with a high number of marketplace sellers. A lot of sellers here opt in to what is known as automatic re-pricing of their inventory. What this means is that every so often, prices will be adjusted to match the new low prices in the marketplace. Can often find good deals here.
Barnesandnobles.com I have found Barnes and Nobles marketplace sellers to be a little more pricey than others, although I have found pretty good deals via a book price comparison site a few times.
Biblio.com I do not have any purchasing experience with Biblio, but have heard good things. I have seen them pop up as the low price on book price comparison sites a few times.
Ebay.com Ebay can be tricky. Sometimes you get great deals, other times people overpay for a book. There are two formats that you can buy books via Ebay. The first is fixed price auctions, which works somewhat like Half.com. The seller lists a price for the book and a seller determined shipping charge. Often fixed priced auctions are pricey. The other option is buying on auction. The listing is active for 3, 5 or 7 days, and people are allowed to bid. Not really recommended for college students however, unless you know well in advance what book you need, since you have to wait for the auction to end, and there is no guarantee you will not be outbid at the last minute.
Book rental sites
Yet another option is renting your books online. I do not have much experience in this area so cannot make an accurate recommendation. Some sites that do offer rental programs are:
Chegg.com
Bookrenter.com
Campusbookrentals.com
Book trades
If you are feeling a little more risky, you may be able to get your book for the cost of shipping, or even free, from book trading sites. How this works is you post books that you would like to trade in exchange for a book you want. This is probably not ideal for most students, as the book you seek may not even be available. You would have to know well in advance what books you need to start looking for them. Some examples of these sites are:
Paperbackswap.com
Swaptree.com
Libraries
Finally, the ultimate FREE source for books, your library! You can search for a book at all the libraries near you at WorldCat.org. If there are no local copies of your book, most schools offer an interlibrary loan program and can most likely get you the book within a week. In addition, most schools also keep a few copies of the required books for classes, but they may get checked out early. If you can get a copy however, simply make photocopies of the relevant parts of the book, and you are on your way! This is even cheaper if you have access to a departmental copier at no cost.
Important Tips and Notes
Remember, when buying books from third party sellers, give ample time for shipping and any problems that may arise. Books are mostly shipped via media mail which can take up to two weeks to arrive, so plan accordingly. If you are on top of buying your books at a price that you are more comfortable with, you WILL be rewarded with more cash this semester. Buying books online is always cheaper than buying at your bookstore. Best of luck finding your books!
We've recently added a new feature here at BookSpy.Net. A gadget version of our popular book price search site is now available through Google Gadgets.
Using the BookSpy.Net Gadget
The BookSpy.Net Google gadget lets you quickly search for textbooks from your desktop, iGoogle page, or even your own web page or blog. To use the gadget, simply enter a title, author, or ISBN, and click 'Search'. Entering an ISBN is the fastest and most accurate way to search, and you will be taken straight to the lowest four prices from dozens of vendors. From the results page you can go straight to the vendor and purchase the book for the lowest price! If you entered a title or author first, you will first be taken to a list of search results. Find the book you are looking for and either click the title or click 'Compare Prices' to be taken to the results page.
Here is a preview of the gadget, resized to fit this page:
Adding the Gadget to your iGoogle page or Desktop
You can add the BookSpy gadget anywhere you can place a gadget (ie iGoogle, Google Desktop) with the following link: 
. Alternatively, you can go to your iGoogle page, and add the gadget by searching through the directory.
To add a gadget the Desktop via the Desktop Sidebar:
- At the top of the Sidebar, click Add.
- Type the URL for a gadget spec into the Search gadgets text field and then click Search gadgets. If the gadget is found, its title is displayed next to an Add button. Click Add.
Adding the Gadget to your webpage or blog
You can get low book price search results on your webpage or blog by following this link. From here you can get the code for the gadget and even choose its size to match your requirements!
I would just like to thank a user who recently contacted me about problems viewing the mobile bookscouting tools on certain cellular devices. All errors were fixed, and the site has now been verified on both older Nokia and Samsung phones, as well as Verizon smart phones with Windows 5. Please let me know if you run into any more bugs.
Used books are everywhere. Used books are in people’s homes, used books are in libraries, used books are online, in thriftstores, at garage sales, in your newspaper, in...well you get the picture. A lot of these books are firewood basically, that you do not want in your house or office. Others can net a 10,000% profit. Just remember, when looking for books, never buy without knowing its value. Use scout tools such as the free one offered at bookspy.net. Here are a few ways you can net used books:
- Craigslist- Run a craigslist ad offering to buy used books. You will get all kinds of responses to this. Again, check before you buy or offer low.
- Local Newspaper Ads - Again, run an ad offering to buy books. You will get everything from little old ladies offering you 500 romance books, to college students looking to make a little money.
- Booksalefinder.com - Hit up your local friends of the library book sales. This is often where the big money comes in. Just be aware that some libraries are looking up books themselves and keeping the good ones! Skip over these libraries if you find any doing this.
- Thrift stores - These tend to get picked over quickly by other booksellers, but if you live in rural area, or there are not many booksellers in your area, these can be a goldmine.
- eBay - Finally, you can look for underpriced books on eBay. This one takes a bit more time investment, and a bit of hard work. Ocassionally it can pay off though.
Book scouting can be a profitable business, either buying for yourself to resell, or working for someone else. The tools of the trade can be quite expensive however, and may put a few first time book scouts off. You may see such tools as hand held bar code scanners that look up the price of the book. These scanners generally come in two flavors, the standalone version (very expensive) or the kind that attaches to your cell phone (less expensive, but still pricey). There is, however, a third option that you may not know about:
You can look up book prices right from your web enabled phone.
If you have internet access on your phone you can simply go to your favorite site and look up the book of interest. The problem with this approach has been that generally, it takes a long time for a web page to load on your phone. Also, if you do not have a phone with a full featured web browser, you were generally out of luck.
At BookSpy.net we have implemented a search feature just for book scouts that alleviates this problem. In addition, most mobile phones with data access should work. Just point your mobile device to http://scout.bookspy.net/ to access the mobile version of our site. You can enter an ISBN, Title or Author and get concise, easy to read results. You will receive the Amazon Sales Rank
, and the lowest prices from a number of vendors including Amazon, eBay, Half.com, Alibris and more. Best of all, as part of our grand opening, we are providing this service for FREE to users of our site.
Hopefully this will help prospective book sellers get up and running, and keep your business profitable!