Home Features Finding textbooks on Facebook: Students buy textbooks from friends

Finding textbooks on Facebook: Students buy textbooks from friends

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Raven Leverett

Features Editor

With a new semester just beginning and winter break coming to an end, students are scrambling for money to buy textbooks for their new classes.

However, they are not doing it on Chegg or Amazon, but Florida Southern College textbook exchange and rental on Facebook. The page, FSC Textbook Exchange, was created by sophomore Jamie Everett. This page basically allows students to sell  books and buy books for a better value than the school’s bookstore offers.

Everett originally created the website last summer, but lately it has swelled to 242 members.

“I made it so students could have a place to swap books or sell them since the bookstore doesn’t always take your book back, students can earn a little cash to buy books for the next semester and others won’t have to pay a fortune for books,” Everett said.

Although not all students have heard of this Facebook page, textbook rental websites have been around for awhile.

Most students know of the textbook website Chegg. Chegg is a company based in Santa Clara, Calif. that specializes in online textbook rentals, scholarships, homework, course reviews and more.

Amazon also rents textbooks, but it sells other merchandise, too.

FSC students found reasons why FSC Textbook Exchange is better than these other websites.

“I would rather buy a book off of a student than off of Chegg because it is like brand loyalty, you can trust your friends to buy a book off of them,” junior Megan Riordan said.

According to Riordan this website is great because after your books sit around a few semesters the bookstore will not take them back, but with this page there is still an opportunity to sell your books.

Although there are many pros to using this page, there are reasons why students should be careful before purchasing a book.

“I think one con of it is people buying the wrong books,” Riordan said.

Further issues with this page could be the fact that it is actually a closed group. Therefore you must request to be a part of the group to view and interact with others about the different textbooks that are for sell or that a student is wanting to purchase. Still, one could argue that this is a safety precaution like with the Florida Southern Carpool page.

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