KnightSwap creates simplified textbook buying and selling

The process of buying and selling textbooks each semester is about as convenient as getting a root canal.

Luckily for UCF students finishing up the fall semester and gearing up for the spring, it need not be such a dreaded ordeal, as long as they turn to KnightSwap.

Company co-creators and co-founders Daniel Gierling and Dan Chimento describe KnightSwap as a place where UCF students can network to buy and sell used textbooks directly to each other in order to avoid getting overpriced books and getting under-refunded — for free.

The idea for KnightSwap stemmed from shared sentiments of anger, frustration and bitterness toward thoughts of the campus bookstore emptying customers' pockets. Chimento and Gierling also knew that they were not alone.

"People get angry when they talk about textbooks and the college bookstore," Chimento, a computer science major, said.

The duo pulled an all-nighter and created a first version of the site the morning after Gierling, an electrical engineering major, first posed the idea to Chimento, his roommate. Three weeks and 150 combined man hours later, the KnightSwap website went live Nov. 7.

Gierling and Chimento said they have had positive response from students.

"I've never had anyone walk away when I go to tell them about it," Gierling said. "Instead they say ‘That's amazing!' and then go start using it."

KnightSwap offers students a textbook buying process that consists of just a few button clicks. According to the KnightSwap website, it will only take a user 20.9 seconds to register and 34.5 seconds to list a book.

"Try to beat it, we dare you," the website says.

Once a KnightSwap user has found a textbook, the student may contact the seller through the information posted on the seller's profile. Book exchanges are to be made on campus, at a mutually convenient and safe meeting location, and made with cash.

Chimento said that the entire process — registering as a new user, listing available books and searching for textbooks for the upcoming semester — can take under 20 minutes because the site is clean and easy.

In an effort to uphold and maintain this same simplicity, Chimento and Gierling created KnightSwap solely for the benefit of students at UCF.

"If you open it up to the world, the site would be filled with books no one at UCF would want," Gierling said. "If you limit it to UCF students, it filters out spam or computer bots loading up fake books."

UCF students already using KnightSwap have appreciated this aspect of the company.

"KnightSwap is a great way for UCF students to swap UCF custom edition books that you can't buy just anywhere," said junior marketing major Anna Philbrick.

When discussing tentative plans for the future of KnightSwap, both Gierling and Chimento agree that if the site were to take off with UCF, they wouldn't want to expand the site to other schools. Instead, they prefer to recreate the clean, simple and streamlined KnightSwap experience by creating individual websites per school.

Regardless of the direction KnightSwap takes, Chimento and Gierling are adamant about keeping this service completely free. KnightSwap has been a low-cost investment on their part; the KnightSwap website exists on Gierling's personal server, and the only cost has been the site's domain name.