Penn undergraduate entrepreneurs are offering an alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks each semester -- and more and more students are taking advantage of their services.
Two Web sites launched last fall, PennDeck.com and Pennforsale.com, join such national textbook exchange Web services as Half.com and Textexchange.com to facilitate the buying and selling of used books.
Though the Penn Bookstore does buy and sell used books, many students feel they can get a better price by exchanging them online.
Engineering sophomore Andres Zarate and Wharton sophomore Paul Baker created PennDeck.com -- which exists exclusively for exchanging textbooks -- in August.
They currently report 2,000 users and over 500 textbooks exchanged, generating $30,000 for sellers using the site. Buyers have saved $20,000 off of publisher's listed prices.
Baker said that the appeal of PennDeck is its organization. Textbooks are listed by department and searchable by ISBN, an individual identification number printed on all books.
"If you know what books you need, you can just type in a few words," he said.
Users must register to buy or sell textbooks, but the service is free. Even if PennDeck expands beyond the University to become a for-profit venture, it will remain free to Penn students, Zarate said.
"We want to feel like we're actually going to give something back to the community," he said.
"It's a pretty basic service," Baker added. "It should be free."
Zarate and Baker plan to introduce a "Penn gear" component to the Web site in the spring where users will be able to exchange dormitory room goods like couches and posters.
They also plan to list graduate student textbooks and bulkpacks.
Wharton junior Julie Steinberg and Engineering freshman An Nguyen launched Pennforsale.com in late October.
The site, which bills itself as Penn's "online marketplace," includes a variety of products and services for exchange -- among them used textbooks.
Steinberg did not know how many users had exchanged textbooks or how much revenue had come from textbooks alone.
However, she said, "we've got a very stable base of users every day [and] a couple hundred hits per day."
Like PennDeck, the site is free to students. Unlike PennDeck, Pennforsale does not require users to register.
Many students say that they still buy the majority of their textbooks new from a bookstore but would prefer to use textbook exchange services when possible.
Wharton sophomore Steve Skillen said he didn't know anything about Pennforsale but had used PennDeck once with his roommate's recommendatio.
"It's practically brand new, and it was only $50," he said of his originally $120 textbook. "So I can't complain."
Unfortunately, the drawback to these sites is that they do not offer the same selection as major bookstores. College freshman Richard Lawrence attempted to buy used books from Textexchange.com, but "they didn't have any of the books I need for this semester."
"I would definitely look to buy from" PennDeck and Pennforsale in the future, he added.
College sophomore Elizabeth Harris said she has always bought used textbooks from the Penn Bookstore.
"I've heard about them," she said of textbook exchange services like PennDeck, but "I got all my books somewhere else before I thought of using them."
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