It doesn’t take an economics major to figure out that buying textbooks can take a toll on a college student’s pocketbook.

But it did take one to do something about it.

Frustrated with textbook prices at Norris Bookstore and the absence of a public list of required books for classes, Weinberg and SESP sophomore Jonathan Webber created nuonlinebooks.com in August.

The Web site offers students a way to save money and donate to a local charity at the same time. nuonlinebooks.com offers 541 books for more than 300 Northwestern University classes and has raised more than $2,000 for Family Focus Our Place Evanston so far.

“I think the reason Norris has had such a monopoly in the past is that students have to go to Norris to find out what books they have to purchase,” said Webber, who also is Associated Student Government’s secretary and parliamentarian. “And that’s always been very frustrating to me.”

Students find their books by selecting their school, department, course and professor from pull-down menus on the site’s main page. They also can type book names into the Web site’s Amazon.com search bar. Eight percent of sales made by ordering books through the site, as well as five-and-a-half percent of sales from the site’s Amazon.com search bar, go to Family Focus.

Webber selected Family Focus, a not-for-profit agency supporting programs for children, teens, parents and families, because many Northwestern students volunteer there, he said.

“It’s a great charity that serves the community,” he said. “I like how it’s local and how it has a very direct impact on the Evanston community.”

Sandra Hill, director of Family Focus Evanston, said it didn’t take much convincing for the organization to become the nuonlinebooks.com beneficiary.

“It was a no-brainer in my mind,” Hill said. “It’s sort of a win-win for everybody.”

So far, Webber said about $2,500 has gone to Family Focus from about $32,000 in total sales. More than 1,000 books have been ordered since Sept 1, he said. The Amazon.com search bar has contributed significantly to revenues, he said. Many students used it to find books, and others used it to purchase products such as blenders and digital cameras.

“My goal was (to raise) $2,000,” Webber said. “So for the first quarter, I think it was a big success.”

Communication sophomore Becca Donaldson used the site this quarter and said she plans to use it from now on.

“There’s definitely a large portion to be saved by buying (books) on nuonlinebooks.com,” Donaldson said. “Especially because the proceeds don’t go to benefit corporations, they go to benefit a local Evanston charity that definitely has more use for the money than a big business would.”

Before Winter Quarter, Webber plans to add a book exchange to nuonlinebooks.com. It will be a free medium for students to sell their used books directly to each other. ASG also has an online book exchange, but that Web site is rarely used, he said.

“While it won’t raise any money for charity, it is a good service for students, and it will attract many more students to use the site,” he said.

Webber said he has no current plans to create an online book search engine at other schools. It took him days to contact departments and professors for nuonlinebooks.com alone, and he inputted each book manually.

Reactions from professors have been “99 percent positive,” Webber said. He estimated that between 250 and 300 students have purchased books through nuonlinebooks.com.

“It’s extremely unfair, the price of textbooks in college,” he said. “While this certainly isn’t a fix-all, I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

Reach Matt Presser at [email protected].