By By Anne Baker, News Staff

‘ Students looking to lighten the monetary load of their textbooks have a new ally on their side.
The website Book.ly was’ recently launched to help cash-strapped students spend less on textbooks, said one of the site’s four founders Igor Pedan.
‘Textbooks have been going up in price pretty significantly in the last few years,’ said Pedan. ‘Our goal is to help students find a better way to shop for books.’
Students at Northeastern and about 10 other schools can use the site to compare the retail price of their books against amazon.com and half.com, which Pedan said offer cheaper prices and used books. All students have to do, he said, is type in the name of their class on the site’s search bar. This helps them not only save money, he said, but time as well.
Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the Association of American Publishers, said that while tuition and housing fees are often covered by loans or parents, textbooks have historically been the responsibility of students to pay, and that can be stressful when prices are so high.
‘The cash laid out for books is sometimes the straw that breaks the camel’s back,’ he said. ‘Students will say, ‘how can I get around this?”
High textbook prices have long been a concern for students.
‘I think they’re expensive in the bookstore,’ said junior mechanical engineering major Sean Kelly. ‘But it is easy to go online and find them cheaper.’
Student Government Association (SGA) President Rob Ranley said the bookstore does the best it can to price books fairly.
‘I think they’re expensive in general,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s too much the bookstore can really do about it.’
A version of Book.ly was created in 2005, when Pedan was still an undergraduate at Brandeis University. He said the site had been a ‘big hit’ there, but he and his friends did little with the concept and eventually ended the site.
But last summer, the founders decided it was time for another shot, and relaunched a similar site this fall.
Pedan estimates that students save 40 percent by comparison shopping on Book.ly.
‘The ultimate goal is to help students buy textbooks and save money in the process,’ he said.
But Pedan and his co-founders are not the only game in town; Ranley said SGA is also working to save students money on textbooks. While the organization had previously floated the idea of forming a rental textbook system, it was a ‘logistical nightmare,’ he said.
Now SGA is focused on lowering costs through varied, smaller changes, like encouraging professors to use course packs whenever possible and getting more required reading into the library.
‘It’s something that we have in the budget priorities right now, so it’s on the radar,’ Ranley said.
However, some students said they find alternatives to buying the books. Freshman marketing major Anuli Akanegbu said she borrows her books from older students who have already completed the courses. But she said the site could be a useful tool for a budget-minded student.
‘I can see the benefits of a website like that,’ she said.
Ranley also credits websites like Book.ly for ’emphasizing the competitive benefits’ of comparison-shopping. Ranley added that the effort to lower textbook expenses will not be an easy one.
‘There’s only so much you can really do,’ he said.