It’s that time of the year again, when students trade in textbooks they paid $60 for and get perhaps $10 in return.

A corporation out of Baltimore, Switch Textbooks, Inc., is hoping to give students another option this December. By going to the corporation’s web site, switchtextbooks.com, a student can trade their textbooks for ones he or she needs.

The concept is basically this: Students interested should go onto the web site and fill a questionnaire about the books they have and the books they need. The system automatically matches students with others who have or need their book. After the student with the book is notified, he or she has four days to send the book. The student receiving the book then has to fill out a satisfaction statement saying the book is what they wanted and it is in the condition it was said to be in. Whenever someone sends a book, he or she gets positive trade credit and whenever someone receives a book, the person gets negative trade credit.

Co-founder Will DeSantis said that he and co-founder Patrick Nagle came up with the idea when they went to a bookstore to exchange a book and noticed that the girl in front of them had the book he needed. DeSantis said the idea expanded from that to where it is now, with the website expected to debut in 4,000 schools across the nation next month.

DeSantis said a program like this is important, especially now, because tuition costs are rising and students are looking for ways to save money.

“Book prices continually rise and publishers make new editions to make used books obsolete,” he said. “We want to put power back in the students’ hands.”

University student Erin Platzer said she thinks the web site is a great idea.

“Textbook prices have gotten out-of-hand lately,” she said. “It’s easy to go in and spend upwards of $300 on books that you only use for four months.”

She said that hopefully this web site is successful enough to cause publishing companies totake notice and lower textbook costs.

The website’s service is described as a hybrid of NetFlix, Kazaa, and eBay and is expected to begin this December. The site will make both new and used textbooks available to students.