Verba Compare in Chronicle’s Wired Campus Blog

This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Jeff Young takes a look at textbook price comparison services in his Wired Campus blog. While both established retailers like Amazon and student projects like BookSavr.com are offering comparison shopping applications, Young notes that campus retailers aren’t resting on their laurels:

Several campus bookstores are fighting back against online retailers by offering their own price-comparison Web services…. Nearly 100 college bookstores have added the research feature to their Web sites with the help of a company called Verba, started by recent Harvard University graduates.

And the strategy seems to be working:

Estella McCollum, director of KU Bookstores at the University of Kansas, which set up the service last year, said that she was nervous at first, but that in about 80 percent of the cases, students chose to buy from the bookstore rather than from an online competitor. The site tracks when students do choose alternatives and recommends price cuts to store managers. And when students do click through to the Amazon.com link, the bookstore at least makes a small commission for sending them.

To take a look at the full article, hop on over to the Wired Campus blog here.