

Amazon.com attacks new and used textbook market - cwan
http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=465600

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mbrubeck
I used to work in the "Merchant Technology" (third-party sellers) team at
Amazon, and textbooks have been a very big part of that business for many
years now.

The new thing here is the "Trade-In" program, which lets you ship your used
textbooks to Amazon and get paid for all of them right away (instead of
listing them and waiting for someone to buy them):
<http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=2205237011>

My old boss is the manager of the Trade-In team, if anyone has any questions
about it...

~~~
dangrossman
Interesting. I looked up a brand new book on Artificial Intelligence I paid
around $90 for at my university's book store. Amazon is offering $10 to trade
it in. I could get much more than that selling it to one of the buyers that
set up out the back of trucks at the end of each term on campus.

Edit: I also looked up a linear algebra text I paid around the same for, and
the trade-in value there was $43. Seems like there's a large variation even
for latest edition text books.

~~~
mbrubeck
My friend at Amazon writes, _"We know that pricing isn’t as competitive as we
want it. We are working hard with our book refurbishers to fix that."_

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mkelly
I really hope someone, someday, can successfully cut the legs out from under
the racket that is the textbook market. Forced bundles, superfluous editions
that do little but change the page numbering, etc. I suspect a healthy enough
used-textbook market could do this: As a teacher, if you _know_ students can
obtain an older edition easily, you could freeze the version of textbooks you
use.

I don't know to what degree university politics would forbid using older
versions, though.

~~~
cwan
[http://industry.bnet.com/media/10003790/flat-world-
knowledge...](http://industry.bnet.com/media/10003790/flat-world-knowledge-a-
disruptive-business-model/) \- Open source textbooks is another alternative -
and a pretty exciting one at that.

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jmathai
We'll be launching <http://www.textbookrevolt.com> this weekend. I scoff at
Amazon and Chegg :)

Peer to peer textbook rentals where students are the ones who save and make
money.

~~~
mkelly
I wish you great success.

FYI, on Chrome with a window size of 1280x800, the t-shirt image covers up the
last word of your title. ("Cheap college textbook rentals just got
[t-shirt]").

~~~
jmathai
Thanks for the tip...there are some other display issues with Chrome. We'll be
getting to those bugs post launch :).

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rglovejoy
Just for fun, I clicked on the link and looked for SICP. Amazon gave me a
price of $115.44. If you look at the bottom, you'll see a link for the same
book, only Amazon is selling it for $69.34!

What is the difference between the two? The links are:

$115.44 : [http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-
Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs-
Second/dp/0070004846/)

$69.34 : [http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-
Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs-
Engineering/dp/0262011530)

Aside from price, the only difference that I can make out is that the cover
for the more expensive version is a lighter shade of blue. What it looks like
is that Amazon is charging a lot more if you buy SICP as a textbook rather
than as a regular book.

~~~
stse
Different editions and publishers, McGraw-Hill vs The MIT Press.

~~~
rglovejoy
No, they're both the same book: both are second edition, with the same number
of pages. Each page even has the same reviews (note reviews by Peter Norvig
and pg). The only differences are the price and the ISBNs.

~~~
hga
Indeed, as you note the ISBNs are different. The market is officially divided
between the two publishers, one has US, the other the rest of the world.

As a side note it's all online and under a Create Commons license....

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adammichaelc
I'm in a group of classes where all the students take the same group, an
"integrated core" if you will. For the same 5 books, my classmates who went to
our school's bookstore spent $450 +- $100. On Amazon, I got older editions of
the same books for $130...

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manbearpig
Yup this is similar to the cool thing that Chegg introduced after years of
just facilitating student-to-student exchanges. I used to just sell to
students directly (and usually could come very close to covering initial
purchase price), but after graduating I had to turn to Chegg to sell my books.
Prices weren't nearly as good as they were with direct selling, but they were
much better than what the bookstore would offer.

The HUGE advantage to selling on Chegg instead of Amazon is that Chegg gives
you REAL MONEY (in the form of a prepaid debit card). Some functionality on
their site could be improved, but the fact that they give REAL MONEY gives
them a big edge.

~~~
jmathai
We're using a similar model but allowing students to rent their books to other
students (get paid & retain ownership). In the long run we think we'll kick
Chegg's butt. <http://www.textbookrevolt.com/>

