Big Words is an online business where students can rent, buy or sell their textbooks for a discounted price.

“My experience of buying books when I was at school was lack of availability, extremely high prices and long lines at the bookstores at the beginning of every semester,” Sherwood said. 

When he decided to create the online store, he realized it should not matter where the books are bought from, as long as the students get the best prices available.           

 Marketing Director Kevin Wolf has been working for Big Words for four years and has a similar outtake on it as Sherwood.                

“Textbooks are very expensive, so anything we can do to inform students and help them save money on their books is important,” Wolf said.                     

Sherwood explained the process of buying or selling books on his website is fairly simple. All the student has to do is search the books needed, and add them all to the “bookbag” at once.    

Once the search price comparison button is clicked, Big Words automatically runs every combination of all the books at every different store. Then the cheapest combination of stores to buy the needed books is calculated, all shipping fees and promotional discounts included.                 

Sherwood also mentioned the two main goals of Big Words are to always find the least expensive copy of the book and to only search inventories of reputable companies, like Chegg or Amazon. This makes it easier for students to trust Big Words, by knowing they are buying from a reliable source.              

 “On average, students who take Big Words cheapest recommendation to rent and sell, will save $1,000 per year,” Sherwood said.               

 In fact, within the last two or three years, Sherwood and his staff did an experiment to compare the price difference between renting the books or buying and selling at the end of the semester.              

 The top 1,000 most popular textbook titles were taken for the study. Prices between the two options were compared, and Sherwood concluded it was cheaper to buy and sell each semester rather than rent books 99% of the time.                           

 In order to make Big Words known, Wolf said they have representatives at various universities handing out promotional materials about the company.       

 “It’s really an awareness thing. There are still a lot of people that don’t know that you can rent or buy books online, so just getting that word out is very important,” Wolf explained.        

To rent, buy, or sell books using this company, visit www.bigwords.com, or download the free app available for iPhones and Androids.