Borders Creates New and Used Textbook Marketplace

Borders, based in Ann Arbor Michigan, has launched a new Textbook Marketplace this week for students to purchase greatly discounted textbooks for class. Over 1.4 million textbooks are available currently in the marketplace. Discounts can be as high as 90% off the new price for the same class material. The site was developed in partnership with Alibris and offers books for college, elementary school and everything in between. Also included are supplemental books that are often referenced in class.

Borders hopes the marketplace will be a destination for students and parents looking to purchase textbooks at a discount and save during the back to school period which is only a few weeks away. Students can also sell materials to buyers through the selling platform.

Other competitors in the space include Barnes and Noble, Chegg and Bookrenter, both of which also provide rentals. Rentals seem to be the most popular way to obtain textbooks, which the current Borders site does not provide according to a TechCrunch story. But for those students that want to save certain books as a reference for future job duties or resell the textbooks themselves, this solution is a great place to check and manually compare prices.