Over the past months supporters of the Web site BookOnCampus.com have mounted a battle against the Tufts bookstore.
While it appears that the bookstore has outstripped its competitor, Books On Campus has been gaining momentum in the process.
Starting last semester, Books On Campus has made an appeal to students' pocketbooks. According to senior Juan Escobar, who started the Tufts chapter of Books On Campus, by eliminating the middleman and thereby facilitating a direct purchase, the Web site offers better prices than the bookstore and increases the number of re-sales.
Students save an average of 53 percent on their purchases and receive four to six times more money from buyback than they would from campus bookstores, Mark Kantor, one of Books on Campus' co-founders, told the Daily.
The Web site allows students to either post books or buy them from other students. Once users find the book they want, they contact the sellers directly to work out an arrangement.
Escobar said that the site has enjoyed wide popularity. "There are about 1,100 students at Tufts using the site," he said. The Tufts chapter also has a Facebook.com group that has over 400 members.
Despite this popularity, Tufts bookstore manager Ron Gill said that the Web site has had "zero effect" on the bookstore's sales, which he said are "higher than ever."
Last semester, buyback numbers reached an all-time high and Gill said he expects the numbers will improve even more in the future.
At issue between Gill and Escobar is the quality of inventory offered by their companies and the fairness of their prices.
Gill said that Books On Campus' inventory is too unreliable. "I know it's in its infancy, but they have only limited amounts," he said.
Escobar disagreed. "Our inventory is based on what the students have bought in the past or books that are required by Tufts classes, so if the store has sold it we will have it," he said.
Also, if users have not posted a book that students are looking for, they can check to see if the book is available at other colleges and universities, he said.
They also have different views about the fairness of the pricing that each party offers. Books On Campus has as its mantra that the bookstore is unfair because it sells books for too much money and does not buy them back for enough. Consequently, the site attempts to offer lower prices. Unlike at the bookstore, the price of each book is set by the individual student book owner rather than the publisher.
In addition, the bookstore is owned by Barnes & Noble, and pays an operating fee to Tufts in order to be on campus.
Even so, Gill said that the bookstore does help out students as much as it can in the buyback process.
"If we know we're going to use [the book] again, the student gets half of the money back for the book," he said.
Then there are a greater number of less expensive used books to sell to the next group of students. "It's a win-win for everyone," Gill said. "We'd rather buy from the students."
Currently, Escobar admits that the campus bookstore maintains an edge over his site. "I wouldn't want to say that we did better than such a giant as Barnes & Noble," he said.
He said that more people will likely use the site as its reputation increases. "We don't have the presence that we would like thus far, but obviously that gets developed."
In terms of which offers the better system, Kantor, who still remembers getting only $3 back for a book that cost him about $180 while an undergraduate student, said that his company is clearly superior to the bookstore. "It just really seems like that whole system is inefficient," he said.
But Books On Campus is not the only group concerned with efficiency. Gill, who said that the store's prices are locked by the publishers, said he wants to make the current system as understandable and efficient for students as possible.
"We are willing to meet with student government [and] the student body" to make students understand how they can best use the bookstore's system to their advantage, he said.
