A new money-saving option for buying and selling textbooks now is available to Truman students.

Three members of the Association for Computing Machinery, a club for computer science majors on campus, developed a new program that allows students to post textbooks online at whatever price they decide. The Web site is tsubay.com, and it went online Friday.

Senior Anup Parikh, the main developer of the Web site, said it is completely free, so neither he nor ACM will receive a profit from the sales.

"Next semester, if the site gets bigger, then I'm going to have to spend more money behind it," Parikh said. "Then I'll have to try to find some way of recovering."

Parikh said the Web site is in no way affiliated with the school because the bookstore has a contract with Barnes and Noble. Because of the contract, he was unable to use any University equipment to run the Web site.

Parikh said he decided to develop the Web site because he thinks the bookstores charge too much for used books, especially when they are not in good condition.

"We're all broke, so any way we could save a few bucks would be nice," said junior Dana Schoonover, treasurer of ACM.

Sophomore Liana Boone said she thinks the new program may affect the bookstores negatively because a large majority of their profit comes from book sales.

"I think it will be really good because you won't have to stand in line, and I always feel gypped when I go there," Boone said.

Patty Bolz, owner of Patty's University Bookstore, said she is not yet sure how the Web site will affect her business, but if students are involved, there is typically about a four-year cycle.

She also said this is not the first place where a student can sell books online, and she compared the Web site to others such as Amazon.com.

"It will have its place," Bolz said. "It already does. It's sort of a technologically advanced bulletin board."

She said she wishes the students luck, and she may even occasionally buy used books from them that she needs for her store.

Parikh said he thinks the bookstores will need to become competitive or they may lose a lot of business. But either way, it is the students who will benefit from the reduced prices, he said.

The Web site is designed in a way that allows students to buy books based on both the course and the professor, Parikh said. One problem he said he encountered was finding lists of what books professors plan to use next semester. He said there is no way to ensure that the book being bought will be used again until after the new semester begins.

"It's an uphill battle to do something that Truman tries not to have done," Parikh said.

He said students who buy books from each other will have to decide on their own meeting time and place. He does not plan to take part in the physical book-exchanging process.

 Sophomore Justin Lee said the Web site is a good idea, but it might be too much of a hassle for him to use.

"I'm kind of lazy, so I'd probably just go to Patty's anyway," Lee said.

Parikh spent a month developing the Web site over the summer and finished it two weeks after school started with the help of freshmen Steven Chau and Nick Heppermann.

When he graduates, Parikh said he hopes the Web site will be maintained by other ACM members who currently are learning the program's code.

ACM plans to advertise the site through word-of-mouth, fliers and informing different organizations on campus at meetings.

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