“I don’t know why everyone on the UC can’t just look up a couple of classes,” echoes council member Brian C. Grech ’03. “It requires a sort of a selfless sacrifice of time of half an hour. When kids are really busy it kind of falls to the wayside.”

Fayanju says the council’s inability to collect reading lists for classes, at least this semester, alienated students from UC Books.

“Some of their books for courses weren’t listed and that turned some people off from UC Books,” Fayanju says.

Burst Bubble

Many council members say they also blame a downturn in the online marketplace for the decline of UC Books.

Grech notes that when UC Books began, online booksellers were still relatively new and buying books online was considerably cheaper than buying them in stores.

“They were throwing money at us to check out their sites,” Grech says.

Gusmorino says he hoped to take advantage of the online buying frenzy when he founded UC Books.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm for online book buying,” Gusmorino says. “All these online bookstores were just starting.”

Recently, however, online prices have “kind of settled into the real world,” Grech says, and formerly booming online booksellers have taken a turn for the worse.

“Many of them have either gone out of business or have been absorbed,” Gusmorino says.

As a result of increased online prices, Gusmorino says students are less likely to buy their books online.

“You used to be able to save $20 on a textbook,” he says. “It was more worth it than it is now when you can only save maybe $5.”

According to council President Sujean S. Lee ’03, UC Books’ fading popularity adversely affected the council’s approach to the service this year.

“There was less demand and less enthusiasm,” Lee says. “We maybe didn’t have as much enthusiasm for the project. It was just more deflated because of the inherent characteristics of the market and student body needs.”