Nina E. Glass '03, however, was less lucky with Bigwords.com. She ordered a book from them, but received the book on tape instead.
"They're not as good as Amazon because they don't give you a picture of the book," Glass wrote in an e-mail message.
Glass' past experience, however, has not discouraged her from shopping with Bigwords.com again. "I got over it, and now I really like using them, because it's certainly cheaper than buying books from the Coop," she wrote.
There are also a growing number of websites that search book vendors for user selections and return a list of the best prices available. Such sites, which include Collegebeans.com and Limespot.com, receive a percentage of sales revenue for each book sold through their site.
Even the Undergraduate Council has entered into the online book vending arena. Its site, UC Books, searches a database for the lowest book prices based on a student's course selections.
Land of Milk and Honey?
Gershoni at VarsityBooks.com admits that the company is still losing money, and none of the other off-campus booksellers would answer questions about total sales during the beginning of this semester.
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