*Comparison for Commercial 8/26/03

Why are Bookbyte's prices are so much better than other bookstores or web sites?

College bookstores work very hard to ensure that their prices are the best they can offer. It is important to note that the on-campus institutionally owned stores are absolutely NOT ripping you off. Yeah, sure the prices seem high, but it is not the bookstore that is the source of the high prices.

So, here we are, an on-line textbook seller with these low prices telling you that the bookstores are not the demons of the world like many students and faculty think they are and you’re thinking "What?"

Bookbyte.com does not operate in the same way that college bookstores do. We do not need to carry new textbooks from the publisher, we don’t need to carry 100 percent of the books for every class, we don’t need to pay union wages, and we don’t need to worry about carrying every product you might need for class. We do our best to ensure that we have a wide variety of titles that will satisfy many students but we only carry a few copies of each book so we will typically not have all the books you need.

The bookstores on the other hand must contend with ensuring that they have 100 percent of the books needed for the students who walk in to buy them. Publishers create shrink wrapped packages and so called value added products that you usually don’t need that add greatly to the cost of a book purchase. We don’t need to carry these packages. The publishers have convinced the faculty that these more expensive additions are better for you and for them because they give the faculty test banks, videos, and power point presentations – all of which, you are paying for in the price of the new textbook.

Bookbyte.com does not need to contend with those issues. We don’t operate by any of the standard or traditional methods that bookstores employ. We have found new and innovative methods to bring you a large but limited quantity of books at better prices than your average bookstore; but we can in no way replace them or fulfill the needs of every student.

We welcome you to purchase on our site and hope that our services meet your needs. We do strongly suggest that if we cannot help you find a book that you consider using your college store. If you do find your books through us, we would still encourage you to use your college store to buy your syllabi, course packs, school clothing, and gift items, etc.

I wish you much success in this a coming semester and we look forward to assisting you in completing the educational goals.

Mark A. Freed,
Vice President, Operations and Development

*How did we do our comparison?

1. First we went through our inventory to find books that met these conditions:
   
1. The title and book must be in stock on our website and available for sale at the time of comparison.
2. The book must be in an almost new condition, similar to the best used book quality found in bookstores.
3. The edition had to be new enough that it was probable that the title might still be in use.
2. We then went to Amazon.com and looked up each of these titles by ISBN and recorded the List Price on their website as of 8/26/03.
3. We then went to Bookbyte and looked up each book by the SKU and recorded our selling price listed.
4. We then sold these books to ourselves to remove them from inventory, and actually used them in the commercial.
5. We will return them to our inventory for sale when they are returned by the production company.