Textbook prices rise four times higher then inflation, new site starts the textbooks-for-cheap revolution.

Belleville, NJ February 10, 2005 – Released this past week, the Public Interest Research Group has found in a study that textbook prices are rising more than four times the inflation rate for finished goods. PIRG also determined that students pay on average $900 a year or one fifth of the cost of tuition. Textbook prices are rising due to an increasing popularity of publishers to include supplemental material like software, additional articles and study guides. Most professors and students feel that they could be left out for the sake of price.

On January 10th of this year, a new and popular site, www.urshelf.com, became completely free for college students to find and trade college textbooks. Ever since the company Urshelf went free, their user base has grown from just under 100 users to over 2000 in just shy of one month. They now have users at over 200 colleges across the nation, with a main concentration in the New York City metropolitan area.

The site offers ease of use because students can list their books under their school’s own section, instead of just being listed in general like other popular sites. This saves a lot of time because there is no shipping involved. A student could in reality get their book within hours. A student can also search across the entire country to find their book if they don’t mind the shipping cost and time. The site also has a feature that if you don’t find your book on their site, they will try to find it at 20 other popular sites.

Graceanne Brown, a Junior graphics and design major at NJIT in Newark, NJ, has already sold two books this semester. Graceanne comments, “The site is very easy to use. I sold two books and got paid for them each in under 2 hours.”