As if college tuition isn't enough, paying for course materials sets us back another few hundred dollars each semester. This September, like every other, the long lines in the bookstore and the comparison-shopping for lowest priced textbooks have caused a flurry of activity in the campus center. The average Brandeis student enrolls in four courses per semester and often spends over $500 on textbooks alone. For struggling college students, this figure is not to be taken lightly, prompting a more economical option for comparison shopping.

But Brandeis does not make this easy for students. The on-campus bookstore, privately owned by Barnes & Noble College, makes it difficult for students to get their books elsewhere.

Barnes & Noble College has a contract with Brandeis that allows Barnes & Noble to have a monopoly over college textbooks advertised and sold on campus. In return, Brandeis receives a certain percentage of the sales.

The store invests time and energy into compiling the booklist, which then becomes company property. The store will not publish the list in order to protect their business. Brandeis will not publish the booklist as per the contract they have with the store. "If the school expects me to give a certain percentage of sales back, they have an obligation to protect the territory," said Michael McDade, store manager.

This is also the reason why the University does not allow other booksellers to advertise on campus.

Although students only have one on-campus option for purchasing textbooks,they can take it upon themselves to shop elsewhere. One can often find students in the bookstore writing down titles and prices to take home to shop for better deals online.

Some clubs make it into a business for themselves. McDade said he is aware that at many universities, some student organizations make full textbook lists and sell them to students. Although the store does not like that, it is difficult to prevent.

McDade said students still have ample time during the two-week shopping period to receive course syllabi and order books elsewhere. Unfortunately for the company, many students are doing that now. The numbers of students in recent years who buy their books online has significantly increased. McDade approximates that 25 to 30 percent of Brandeis students are buying books online this year.

Students are looking to the Internet for book-buying because it is cheaper and the bottom line is saving money. Even ordering new books from BarnesandNoble.com can be less expensive. Barnes and Noble, Inc. has the capacity to order large quantities of books from publishers and distribute the books throughout their many superstores. Small college bookstores have different price structures because they buy much smaller quantities. The bookstore orders a certain number of books based on pre-enrollment and then returns all unsold merchandise back to the publisher.

Some of the bookstore's largest competitors are Half.com, VarsityBooks.com, Ecampus.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. Barnes and Noble College is a privatelyowned company, independent of Barnes and Noble , Inc.

BIGWORDS.com is a two-year-old price comparison search engine for textbooks. It provides a huge market of merchants from which it searches for the lowest priced textbooks, both new and used. The site is unique in its use of Uber-BOT technology, which allows the buyer to put all the books a shopping cart at once, and being aware of all the different shipping prices and promotions, the computer tries out every possible combination to maximize savings.

"We get a lot of happy emails from customers and people who are totally surprised," said Jeff Sherwood, CEO of BIGWORDS.com. Sherwood said that many people save as much as $200 while others save only about two dollars. Compared to retail, the average savings of two or more books including shipping is $68 per order. BIGWORDS.com saved students about $2 million in total last year.

Sherwood thinks the ingenious aspect of the site is that it is an unbiased source for information because they aren't selling their own merchandise.

There is no BIGWORDS.com textbook inventory. "We find the best merchants and we aren't trying to sell our own stuff," he said. The merchants pay BIGWORDS.com out of the profits of their sales made on the Web site. There are other sites that operate under the same premise of being a search engine, such as mySimon.com and DealTime.com, but they don't concentrate on textbooks. Uniquely, BIGWORDS.com is the only site with the technology to try every possible combination of books.

Seth Roberts '06 bought five books for one class through Bigwords.com because the bookstore was out of stock. "It is a very useful site because it cuts down Internet search time and I know I will get the best price available," Roberts said. "It is quick, easy and very practical."

Geared toward students the Web site is college student-friendly with games and also offers search engines for DVDs, videogames and music. "Bookstores can not possibly match the prices and availability of our market," Sherwood said.

BIGWORDS..com is currently promoting on 110 college campuses nationwide by hiring students to promote the company. BIGWORDS.com faces the challenge that, like Brandeis, many private universities try hard to keep competition out. Although they cannot formally advertise, campus representatives often flyer mailboxes or hand out bouncy balls to promote the BIGWORDS.com name.

"We are not trying to put stores out of business. What we are trying to do is provide students with options when buying books," Sherwood said.

Some students are reluctant to get books off the Internet because they fear it won't come timely, poor availability, or they might get the wrong thing. "The days of lousy service on the Internet are over," Sherwood said. Competition is too great these days to have poor customer service.

BIGWORDS.com de-listed a merchant this past week after receiving three complaints from students who didn't receive their books on time.

Despite these online advantages, more than a majority of Brandeis students still buy from the Brandeis bookstore. Some don't want to wait four or five days for books. Some students want the flexibility of being able to return books. And many just want the convenience of on-campus textbook buying.

Emily Rosenfield '05 said, "The convenience of having them in your hand immediately - the instant gratification - is worth the little bit of extra money.