SA announces new site for student book sales

By Amy Dave     9/9/10 7:00pm

Student Association President Selim Sheikh announced the launch of the new Textbook Madness website Aug. 30, which will serve as a replacement for the SA Textbook Marketplace website. The Textbook Marketplace site, which was hosted on the SA website, was a site where students could post listings of their used textbooks and potential buyers could search for available books by courses listed.

"It was an easy way for students who have unused textbooks to sell them to other Rice students at a low price," Sheikh, a Martel College senior, said.

The SA Textbook Marketplace was a tool used by many students to obtain cheap textbooks without having to order online and wait days or weeks for shipping, which was a huge inconvenience for students, Sheikh said. During the start of the school year, however, the Textbook Marketplace site experienced some issues when one of the hard drives crashed, making it impossible for students to access the textbook listings and advertise books.

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On Aug. 25, Sheikh asked JD Leonard (Jones '09) for help with the technical difficulties. Leonard, the former SA director of technology, created the current version of the SA website as a sophomore.

"I couldn't find an easy solution, so I offered to whip up a replacement site so that Rice students looking to buy and sell textbooks could continue to do so easily," Leonard said.

Leonard had www.textbookmadness.com running by Aug. 27.

As of Sept. 8, there are 166 active listings on Textbook Madness, submitted by 220 users, according to the site.

The process for buyers and sellers remains the same, with sellers posting their listings of textbooks and their contact information online. Instead of searching for textbooks by course name, buyers can now search listings by using the ISBN number, which ensures that the editions of the book are also the same.

Rice students are the first users of this website, and Leonard plans to open the site up to other universities in the future based on how well it functions at Rice. Although the site will eventually support multiple universities, Leonard assures students that for privacy protection, contact information for sellers will only be available to others at the same university.

"The next version of the site will likely take some months to complete and I plan on enlisting the help of professional developers in order to provide an even better experience for students," Leonard said.

Sid Richardson junior Elaine Wong, who had used the Textbook Marketplace site for two years to buy and sell used textbooks, says she is happy with the new site, but she believes that not enough students know about it yet.

"I reposted all my textbook listings on the new site, but I haven't gotten any responses yet. Most students don't know about the switch, since it happened after the start of classes," Wong said.

Although www.textbookmadness.com has not been widely publicized yet, Sheikh said he is working hard to spread the word about the new site.

"We will soon have waves of fliers available all around campus, and SA senators will be making announcements at their residential colleges," Sheikh said.

When asked why he has provided this site for use at Rice for free, Leonard said that his reasons were twofold.

"First, like many students at Rice today, I also had to spend more of my beer money than I wanted on textbooks," Leonard said. "Second, I have an opportunity to generate some revenue when students click through to online textbook retailers, which will hopefully allow me to focus more time and effort on improving the site and helping more students save money, at Rice and beyond."

Since the current website is a prototype, Leonard is open to any suggestions for improvement. Students are encouraged to volunteer their feedback about Textbook Madness via the contact form, available at www.textbookmadness.com/contact.

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