When buying books, yet another way to save

To the Editor:

We read yesterday's article ("Textbook links new to independent Mocha," Sept. 9) and felt obligated to inform you of another exciting and related venture spawned at Brown. The article brought up the high costs of buying books from the bookstore and the difficulties that students encounter when trying to buy their books online. Another Brown-spawned startup, BrunoBooks, was created precisely to address this.

We graduated last May, and last semester started BrunoBooks.com with alums Jonathan Rhone '08, Jason French '08, and Ari Goodstein '07. What yesterday's article failed to recognize is that simply comparing Amazon's textbook offerings to the bookstore's ignores a world of savings available to students. As former students who have spent countless hours researching this topic, we would know. In our research prior to redesigning our new Web site, we were (pleasantly) surprised to find that searching Half.com and Abebooks.com offers a full 50% greater savings than using Amazon alone.

Students have saved nearly $20,000 so far this semester through BrunoBooks, outpacing the impressive amounts sold last semester. As many students will tell you, BrunoBooks allows students to easily search for their books, with listings by class that instantly search Amazon, Abebooks, and Half and compare these prices with those at the bookstore. Another thing that differentiates BrunoBooks is that listings include shipping price so that users aren't surprised at checkout.

We hope that in your future coverage of textbook-buying at Brown that you will include information on this worthy and timely service. In regards to shopping period stress, these alums can only dream from our rocking-chairs of the joys of Brown that go along with it.

Jesse Maddox '08

Matthew Prewitt '08

BrunoBooks.com

Sept. 9, 2008