BookSpy News

21Jun/11Off

Calling all authors and book blog owners

Are you an author looking to promote their work, or a book blog owner looking for traffic?  We offer special features for you!

As an author, you will get full control over the contents of your group, promotional materials, and moderation tools. Reach your audience in new and exciting ways.

As a book admin, you can edit the detail page of your book in any manner you choose. Your profile will be updated to show your works, and whenever someone searches for you they will see your new profile. If someone likes your books, adds you as a friend, or has your works on any of their lists (bookshelf, wishlist, or group page), they will see all the updates that you make. Users will also have the choice to get notified when you update your blog, when you publish a new book, or when you schedule an event.

All new authors get a featured spot on the first page, with more sponsored placements available.

As a blog owner, you gain access to readers that will be interested in what YOU write. Your blog will be matched with books by genre, and will be displayed as 'blogs you might like...' to potential readers.

Check out this page for an example (look in the right bar) : http://www.bookspy.net/details/9781401230005

 

If you are interested fill out one of the following forms, and we will have you set up in no time!

Form for authors:  Claim a page

Form for blog owners:  Submit your blog

Have a great day!

 

-The Bookspy Team / http://www.bookspy.net/

 

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15Jun/11Off

New book search, book labs, and book community features

As we move out of beta, we have added a lot of additional features that users have been requesting.  Keep the suggestions coming in!

NEW FEATURES:

  • Full international price search, price alerts, and the ability to set destination country and currency
  • Import your existing book list from nearly anywhere, such as google books, libranything, or your own excel or csv file. If you have trouble, just contact me and I'll sort out whatever format you have
  • Sort your bookshelf and wishlist by pub. date., author, title, and more. If there is any additional particular data point you would like, just contact me!
  • 'Labs' section added. Visualization of your books, such as total pages read by author, favorite authors, most read books, etc... Taking suggestions for more visualizations, these are pretty fun!
  • Get notified when your favorite author updates their blog or publishes a new book.
  • Integration of author's blogs into book pages (if you know of one you want included, or are an author yourself, contact me)
  • Full customization of book pages, author pages, and special promos for authors
  • About a dozen additional booksellers added to price search
  • Book groups updated to allow a wider range of customization options. Full HTML editing allowed.
  • Probably a lot more that is escaping me at the moment, been working too hard on this :)

Come check out all the new features at Bookspy.net!

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14Jun/11Off

Get notified when your favorite author posts

Now you can get notified when your favorite author updates their blog.  Just click 'Notify me' by the 'Author's blog' section of any details page.  If you know of an author, or are an author, that has a blog, and you want it included, just send an email with the path to the RSS for the blog to support@bookspy.net.

Come check is out at Bookspy.net!

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14Jun/11Off

More features than you can shake a stick at

We've added a lot of new features based on user feedback.  Keep the suggestions coming in!

  • International price search and price alerts are in.  You can set your current country, as well as your preferred currency when searching for prices
  • You can import your library from nearly any other book management site on the web.  If you have any trouble, just contact us and we'll get it sorted out
  • Authors can now add their blog RSS to our site.  Just contact us to have it added.  Authors also get full editing control of their page, and a special 'Author' page for them to write about themselves, offer promotions, and manage their books on Bookspy

Come check is out at Bookspy.net!

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25Apr/11Off

New site design is live

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!

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6Jul/09Off

Finding cheap college textbooks

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!

1Jul/09Off

New Book Price Comparison Google Gadget for iGoogle or Google Desktop

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: Add to Google. 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!

1Jul/09Off

Cell Phone Book Scout Tools Fixed

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.