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?

While the Internet is famous for making millionaires overnight, the online book market has not shown the same profitability that other areas of the Internet have.

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.