On the eve of a new school year, college students everywhere are gearing up to face a dreadful ritual: where to find and how to pay for those ever costly textbooks. With college textbooks averaging $100 a piece, it is no secret that they represent one of the biggest expenses for college students who spend between $700 and $1,100 a year in that category. This is not new considered the fact that a 2004 federal study found that Textbooks prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004, rising an average of 6 percent a year or twice the inflation rate. With that in mind, it was just a matter of time before the ubiquitous iPhone and the ever growing Apple's apps store appears in the picture with a solution. It comes in the form of a free app called Bigwords from a company by the same name.
The the app works by taking the burden of searching for availability and price comparisons off the shoulders of users. Whether you are looking to buy a new, used, digital books or just renting, all you have to do is enter the books' titles, authors or ISBN codes into the app vast database and hit the price-comparison button.
From there, the app goes to work searching about 30 different sources like Amazon.com, CourseSmart.com, textbooks.com and figures out the best deal by taking in consideration, factors like shipping costs and any discounts you may be entitled to.
Searches can be customized so to look for books by their condition, exclude books from third-party sellers like the ones on eBay, or from specific stores.
To complete your transaction, you have the choice to stay within the app and do it right there or you can have your "shopping bag" transferred to a PC via e-mail for finalization at your convenience.
To make its point, Bigwords claims that the average saving is 66% for new books and more than 35% over online purchases made without using it.
For more, see NYTimes.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment