They just put out a press release today:
Borders(R) today announced the launch of its new “Borders Textbook Marketplace” at borders.com/textbooks. The Marketplace features more than 1.4 million titles including a large selection of used textbooks at savings of up to 90 percent. In addition to saving on their purchases, students can also earn extra cash by utilizing the site’s used textbook buyback option.
“College students spend nearly $1,000 each year on textbooks according to some estimates. That’s a sizable financial burden for students and families, especially in this challenging economic climate,” said Borders CEO Mike Edwards. “As a retailer that provides education and inspiration to millions of customers on a daily basis, we couldn’t be more pleased to offer a huge array of textbooks at great prices to help students advance their education.”
The Marketplace, created in partnership with Alibris, features college, high school, middle and elementary school textbooks as well as other titles often used in classrooms. The site also supports the textbook needs of homeschooled children. Books are quickly and easily searchable by title, author, subject and other criteria.
I’m underwhelmed. I did a random check of the 10 textbooks on both Half.com and Borders and Borders scored 2 out of 10. For this market, a traditional bookstore isn’t the best source. (At least, not for buying textbooks.) You can find a much better price on sites where sellers have to compete (Amazon, half,com, etc).
But when it comes to selling a used textbook, I found that the local college bookstore was usually the best deal, for a simple reason: No Shipping Cost.
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Recommended Links – July 21st « Knaritas Blog // Jul 21, 2010 at 8:06 pm
[...] Supposed big news in the buying and selling used textbooks markets is the addition of Borders to the fray. On Wednesday Border’s announced their new Borders textbook marketplace. One can assume a move toward digital textbooks is inevitable from the retailer with the offer them all eReader approach. Incidentally at the very bottom it is noted that the site is powered by Alibris…though anyone who has ever been to Alibris’ site will immediately know that as it appears all Borders/Alibris did was change color schemes and the name of the psych major advertised. Look for more on this in the Friday Funny!! For the record, Nate the great was not impressed! [...]