Goodness Ohia Obioha
Contributor
The Facebook group “Troy University Textbooks” was created by students to lessen the financial burden of spending money on new textbooks.
Members of the group advertise the books they don’t need anymore and students who are in need of those particular books will respond, agree on a certain price and schedule a meeting place for the transaction.
“Actually, it was very good for me because I bought most of the books from there,” said Kushani Sathsarani, a freshman biomedical sciences major from Colombo, Sri Lanka. “I think it’s cheaper than books in Troy.”
Sathsarani said the group is important not just for student buyers but student sellers as well. She sold her math book through the page for $10.
“For me, it’s been a lot of help because there’s this math textbook I saw at the book shop for $150, and I got it at that Facebook site for $20,” said Adeola Adegoke, a freshman nursing major from Osun, Nigeria.
She said the group was equally as important to students who had no use for certain textbooks and wanted to get rid of them.
“It is very helpful to students,” Adegoke said. “Imagine you’re using a textbook this semester, you can’t use it the next semester, you can’t use it the next year, but with that kind of site you can just go on there, put it for sale, then sell it to people.
“It’s just like helping each other because some of us can’t afford the book shop prices. The book shop prices are way too high … then you know students — we’ll always want to save money.”
While there are several pros to the Facebook group, there are cons, too, according to Zachary (Ge Yang) Gong, a junior accounting major from Lanzhou, China.
“For me, last time I bought a book … the price she gave me was very high so I thought it was a new book or something, but when I saw the book it’s very old and also had a very old edition,” said Gong.
Gong advises the students selling books to post pictures in order to avoid students buying wrong editions.
“I think it’s so convenient because people always want to buy books because you know the textbook is so expensive,” Gong said. “Maybe we’ll want to buy secondhand books, so that group helps me a lot when I want some books.
“Troy University Textbooks,” while it is not perfect, has helped students dodge the bookstore experience or the wait associated with buying books online.
