If the price of textbooks has you in a cash crunch, help is on the way. Gabrielle Jacques faced the same the predicament as thousands of other students—pricey textbooks required for her courses. Semester after semester, when classes begin, students have no choice but to purchase the textbooks needed for class, no matter the price tag. At the end of the course, schools will buy back books, but for a fraction of the price. To cut down expenses, students flock to classified ad sites and social media networks to buy and sell, but find themselves stuck scrolling through pages and pages of listings or posting and reposting ads.
Gabrielle Jacques, a recent graduate and just 22, had an idea: why not create an easy-to-use website to help students swap books?
After a year of work and planning, SwapMyBooks.ca went live in June 2014. Gabrielle's schedule was quickly booked up with interview after interview. Swap My Books spread across the airwaves and Internet with stories on CTV, CBC, and Radio Canada. In the first three weeks, the site attracted over 1200 users who listed upwards of 1500 textbooks for sale. This was just the beginning.
