The days of waiting in the checkout line at a bookstore at the beginning of a term and then waiting inline to sell them back for a fraction of their original price at the end of the term could soon be a thing of the past.
There is now a Web site that allows students to sell to eachother. It is called www.collegecampusconnection.com.
The Web site allows students to post their textbooks online and other students can get in touch and buy them directly from other students.
The idea is that students that sell would make more money than if they sold the back to a bookstore and the students buying the books would pay less.
The site is free for students to use. The only things that costs money on the site is to post off-campus ads. The only people who pay are the adults, landlords and people renting houses.
Originally Kenneth Williams, the founder, was going to charge a $5 membership fee. But then he thought about the Web site and its purpose and changed his mind.
“The purpose of the Web site is to save students money and here I was charging them money. It didn’t make sense,” said Williams.
The Web site has three sections: textbooks, classified ads and off-campus apartment ads. Williams, who at the time was a student at Ohio Northern University, knew there had to be a better way to trade textbooks.
“At Ohio Northern we had this stupid system where in the student center there was a tower and students would fill out a card and place it in the department’s section of the tower. Then other students could take the cards and call. It was a hassle,” said Williams. “I knew there had to be a better way. I thought it would be so nice to have a virtual way to do it in your room.”
The first version of the site was a textbooks exchange. There were about 300-400 users at Ohio Northern.
That site was created by a sophomore design student and was up for less than a year. Williams shut down the site in August and had it professionally redone and add two new sections, classifieds and off-campus housing ads. Every school in the nation, from the largest university to the smallest community college is in the Web site’s database. Williams began to promote the site beyond Ohio Northern in December.
He sent out over 1,000 e-mails to different schools. The schools with the largest concentration of users are at Ohio Northern University, Middle Tennessee State, University of Central Florida and Bowling Green State University. At schools where studenst are using the site ferquently membership grows by about 10 new sellers/buyers a day. The textbook postings grow by 15 every day. Williams said that the site could be a great resource for students if they use it.
“I created the site for students. It is up to them to utilize it. I can’t post ads or anything. I can relate to being a lazy college student, I was one but the site is free and why not,” said Williams.
“There are schools that don’t understand that. The more people who are on the site the more money you can save.”
