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Your Campus Bookstore's Web Site Offers the Best Deals for Buying Online!
By Mark Palmore

The campus bookstore's Web site brings you the best of both worlds — online convenience with walk-in service

The Internet has become one of the easiest ways to buy anything you need, including textbooks. Online-only sellers like BigWords.com and VarsityBooks.com spent small fortunes on advertising last fall to convince students to buy textbooks from them. They encouraged you to "Get out of line and get online," in return for better prices and greater convenience.

The reality, however, is that online-only textbook sellers (those companies operating without a brick-and-mortar storefront) didn't deliver what they promised. Media surveys and industry research reveal that the best place to buy textbooks online is at your campus bookstore's Web site. The Internet is here to stay and the facts are clear: if you want to buy textbooks online, the campus bookstore's Web site is the best choice.

Consider these recent findings:

VarsityBooks.com has been sued by the National Association of College Stores (NACS) for false and misleading advertising. VarsityBooks claims it provides textbooks at 40 percent off suggested retail prices, yet only a small percentage of the books it sells are actually 40 percent off.

A survey conducted by ZDTV.com this November ranked the campus bookstore's Web site superior over online-only sellers for several reasons. In an article summarizing survey results, "Online Textbook Face-off," writer Lowell Goodman concluded that it was faster and more convenient to buy online from the campus bookstore. "For the amount of money you might save by shopping at various online booksellers instead of at the school's own online store, it may not be worth it. You have to deal with different shipping times and different Web sites. In short, you have to deal with time-consuming hassles," concluded Goodman.

A survey by Illinois State University's student newspaper, The Daily Vidette, found that buying textbooks from online sellers or doing price comparison via VivaSmart.com and BestBookBuys.com did not save students much, if any, money when compared with buying from the campus bookstore's Web site. The Aug. 24 article on the subject, "Books or Crooks?," stated that online-only booksellers didn't deliver on promised cost savings and the shipping time to receive books was 3 to 15 days. The survey also found that many online-only sites listed the wrong editions or didn't even carry the desired textbooks.

In September, U.S. News & World Report reported in the article "Textbooks 101: Web Offers Few Bargains," that buying from the online-only textbook sellers proved disappointing. The magazine's research found that buying from online-only textbook sellers didn't deliver lower prices and convenient shopping for students.

NACS research on textbook prices supports these findings. The national trade association randomly selected 50 titles and of the 44 books available from all online sources, the campus bookstore and its Web site offered the lowest price, or a competitive price, 80 percent of the time.

These examples prove that the best Internet deals on textbooks are found at the campus bookstore's Web site. Your campus bookstore brings you the best of both worlds — online convenience with walk-in service. That's because when you order from the campus bookstore's Web site, you have the option to pick up or return your books in person.

When you take into account the inconvenience of buying textbooks from online-only sellers — shipping costs, textbook availability, lack of used textbook selection and timeliness of delivery — purchasing textbooks from the campus bookstore's Web site is the best deal for students.