Our entire CampusBooks.com existence is based upon the belief that students and book-lovers need never pay full price for books and that retail bookstores, be they on university campuses or in malls, sell their wares at inflated prices. We believe that consumers have options, often more options than they know about, and that they can save money by shopping online. So for more than a decade now, we’ve made it our mission to create and enhance a single website where shoppers could see all of their options in one place. And we love it. Not a day goes by that we don’t get students thanking us and saying something to the effect of “I can’t believe how much I saved using your site! Thank you!” Our pleasure.
Recently, with the release of our iBookStore app for iPhone, in particular v2 with scanning, we offered students and book-lovers a totally revolutionary way to literally see the savings — in the palms of their hands while in the bookstore — and to then purchase the cheapest books available in the entire marketplace with just a few touches of the screen.
To illustrate exactly what we’re talking about and why iBookStore is so innovative and illuminating, we did an experiment. We armed an intrepid team of students with our iBookStore iPhone app and had them brave Chicago’s wintry weather to do a little textbook shopping in a few university bookstores. They made their way through the stores, scanning textbooks across disciplines and comparing store prices with online deals — all from the free iBookStore app on their iPhones.
In addition to a few funny moments (and one that got a little tense when a bookstore clerk was uncooperative), the results of the price-comparison excursions are shocking but consistent (not to mention a good reminder of why CampusBooks.com was founded and that our work here is by no means complete). We urge you to visit our YouTube channel, check out these short videos, and see for yourselves that whether it’s medicine, humanities, economics, or law, university bookstores are overcharging students across the disciplines. Our team found that the average savings by using iBookStore was over 36% compared to the bookstore prices. And this statistic was just for new textbooks and didn’t even consider used books or textbook rentals where the opportunities to save are greater.
Watch the videos (iBookStore: Stop the Scam, Start the Scan Visit 1 and iBookStore: Stop the Scam, Start the Scan Visit 2) for details and you’ll see how time after time, our team scanned and saved, scanned and saved. It actually got a little scary for students buying from the bookstores, not to mention a little embarrassing for the bookstores overcharging their students. In fact, there was never an instance where a scan didn’t reveal that our team would save a good bit of money by buying through the iBookStore app instead of from the bookstore.
So in terms of saving and seeing for yourself that the power to stop the swindle lies in the palm of your hand, what are you waiting for? Download iBookStore, grab your iPhone, and head out to the bookstore on your campus. See for yourself just how much you can save and go for it; take advantage of the good deals and cheap books iBookStore finds for you then and there. And while you’re at it, film your own experience as a textbook hero and share it with us on YouTube. Show off your smart shopping and how you Stopped the Scam and Started the Scan!
