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Google Chrome extension provides textbook price comparisons

January 16, 2015

It’s that time of year again — spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks for books students will only use for one semester. But a new extension for the Google Chrome web browser, OccupyTheBookstore, claims to bring competition to the textbook industry by embedding price comparisons to school textbook websites.

Two years ago, Texts.com started as a website allowing students to search for their textbooks and see prices from websites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Chegg.

In the last three weeks, they have developed the in-browser add-on after doing a Reddit Ask Me Anything forum explaining why students should demand more transparency when buying books, according to CEO Pete Frank. Since taking off, OccupyTheBookstore has been downloaded 30,000 times.

Instead of targeting major online booksellers like Amazon, Frank said the plugin is focused toward school-specific websites such as MSU's official bookstore, spartanbook.com. He claims that users can save 35 percent or more on the cost of the books.

“We understood that even students that knew about sites like Amazon and Chegg were going to the bookstore (websites) purely because the bookstore showed the required book information," Frank said. "They were the only source that would tell you what books you actually needed to buy, so since you were already on that site, they would just buy there. That’s why we developed OccupyTheBookstore as a Chrome plug-in.”

Since the extension installs within the browser, it only activates when the webpage students are on displays books that they need to buy. The plug-in is available for college book stores that use Follett, BNCollege or Neebo software, covering about 2,500 universities and college in the United States and Canada, according to the extension's website.

“Our immediate plans are to expand the number of websites we are compatible on,” Frank said. “When the time is right and we have the bandwidth, we are going to likely look to expand to different browsers — probably Firefox first.”

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