The Student Government Association, or SGA, has launched a new textbook exchange website to replace the physical exchange system used in the past, which allowed students to buy and sell their old textbooks in person. The website was pioneered by Misha Ankudovych, a first-year data science and economics combined major, and Kathan Ramnath, a third-year business administration and economics combined major. 

“The difficulty we arrived at was that it was getting harder to track who put what book up for sale, how to get them to students,” Ankudovych said. He said he wanted to make sure “people were getting their books and their money.”

The new page allows sellers to fill out information about the book they are selling, including the condition of the book as well as the class, course and professor it was used for. Buyers are able to search for books based on these criteria and filter the listings by condition and the colleges of the university. 

To purchase a book, buyers need to reach out to sellers using their preferred contact method and negotiate payment and pickup between themselves. Sellers will then fill out a form confirming the book has been sold. 

“It’s all tied to Northeastern, so it’s all classes people at Northeastern are taking,” Ankudovych said. “The idea is that it will be cheaper than buying it at the bookstore, and you don’t really have to worry about shipping since everyone’s in the same area.”

Maria Angelini, a first-year media and screen studies major, said that while she doesn’t use textbooks frequently, she would probably purchase them more now that there’s a clear place to buy from. 

“I don’t really use textbooks, but I think that if there were someplace that I could buy [them] like that, that would be great,” Angelini said. 

Clara Wu, a fourth-year behavioral neuroscience major, said in the past, she had only two routes to access books — the website Libgen and the university. 

“As a STEM major, I don’t really use textbooks a lot, but I think [this website] would be really helpful for humanities majors,” Wu said. 

The website is available now for people to access. Ankudovych hopes sellers will put their books up for sale before the semester is over so people don’t put them in storage or forget about them over the summer and so that people will be able to start purchasing books during the fall semester. 

“Textbook costs are a large issue we need to be tackling from many angles. You shouldn’t be paying egregious amounts of money to be doing work while you’re already paying so much money to attend [the university],” Ankudovych said. “One person buys the book for $100, the next for $70, and the next for $50, and then it turns into generations of people who are saving money.”