New Tool Compares Online Textbook Prices with College Bookstores

A new pricing search engine helps students compare prices of textbooks online and offline, including their own college bookstore, Amazon.com and Half.com, and online book-rental sites. The price comparison tool is the result of a partnership between the 20 Million Minds Foundation (20MM) and SlugBooks.com.

Students specify which college they are attending and enter the department and specific course name. The results show the name of the books required for the class along with the prices at the college books store, on Amazon.com and Half.com, the rental rate at Chegg.com and BookRenter, and the price of the digital book at eBook It (if available).

The 20MM foundation said students continue to pay higher prices than necessary even after Congress passed the HEOA in 2008, a federal law "designed to tackle the rapidly rising cost of textbooks directing colleges nationwide by requiring disclosure of college textbook costs for students during the registration process on their websites."

Foundation president Dean Florez said, "College bookstores are complying with federal requirements when it comes to servicing students - and most allow students several options between purchasing from the bookstore new, used, rental or even digitally - but each of those purchasing options incorporates different economics. These bookstore-provided options are rarely ever compared apples-to-apples with the prices of reputable online alternatives or free open source offerings. The 20MM textbook tool aims to bridge this gap, and exposes courses where savings are significant."

SlugBooks and 20MM plan to expand the school offering to over 1,000 higher education campuses in time for the fall term and also plan on building out the product offering to double as an early adoption discovery tool for professors. They plan to index over 15 million textbooks based on 10 years of adoption.

SlugBooks is a textbook price-comparison web app for college students and 20 Million Minds is a non-profit organization dedicated to greatly reducing textbook costs.