Once upon a time, somewhere in a parallel universe, a couple of college students briskly walked across campus.
On their lovely jaunt across a sidewalk, they spotted an object lying on the ground.
It was rectangular in shape and had what appeared to be hundreds of pages concealed within hard covers front and back.
Suddenly, as they curiously examined it more closely, one of them yelled, “What the hell is that!?” and they both proceeded to burn the object, all the while screaming like banshees and viciously stomping on its ashes.
It may come as a surprise to many, but while pursuing various degrees and finishing up their pricey higher education, college students need heavy quadrangular things with many pages, filled with loads of text and pictures with educational captions.
These things are called books, and it is absolutely essential that we have them.
Consequently, many of us have no other choice than to purchase our books from the college bookstores that are in close proximity of campus.
These businesses, although beneficial in other ways to students, inevitably tend to suck up much of the little money college students actually own.
Hey, I don’t know about you, but I just love paying $80 for a book that I am only going to need for the remainder of one semester, only to sell it back and receive a measly 30 bucks.
To help solve the high-priced book woes of college students, one computer science major, decided to provide a service, in which the student community as a whole work together so that everyone in the long run saves money on textbooks. And thus, etsubooktrade.com was born.
According to the man behind the site, Ian Dillon, etsubooktrade.com functions as a sort of automated classified ad system for textbooks.
It is categorized by class section, price, ISBN, title, author and asking price.
The site acts as a connection point for students, so all transactions take place outside of the site. It provides a method to contact the bookseller, and best of all, it’s private.
Dillon feels that students often get ripped off when buying textbooks. “The biggest rip-off isn’t buying new textbooks (which are grossly overpriced) but trying to sell and buy used textbooks through a bookstore,” he said. “The bookstore intends to make a profit from your books, so they follow a ‘buy low, sell high’ strategy. I tend to think of them as something akin to war profiteers.”
The site’s intended use is for students who are finished with a textbook to have an easy way to sell the textbook to other students, and not back to the bookstore.
“Every student involved saves money,” he said. “The person selling a book can recoup more money, and the buyer spends less than they would at a bookstore. It’s really a win-win situation for everyone.”
Dillon doesn’t expect or want any profit from his free online service, and pays for the site hosting costs out of his own pocket. “One of the reasons that I made this,” he said, “is so there isn’t a middle-man trying to profit from used book sales.”
Getting curious and want to save some money? The best way to get an idea of what this site’s about is to visit it and poke around.
Get that mouse a clickin’ before the end of the semester and surf on over to www.etsubooktrade.com.

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