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Campus Outlaw organizes new way for Union College students to buy books(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Union College, May 26, 2006 (Concordiensis, U-WIRE via COMTEX) --Are you sick of selling your books back to the bookstore and getting less than expected in return? Two Union College sophomores, Josh DeBartolo and Steve Walker, were sick of it and decided to create the new program of an online college textbook exchange called Campus Outlaw. The website, www.campusoutlaw.com, was designed to allow students to buy and sell textbooks (similar to eBay) and quickly and easily exchange the book for money. Walker said, "We came up with the idea last year after the first time we bought books. The bookstore charges a lot so we've tried to get books online from Amazon.com and places like that but it took a long time to get them. We wanted to make a program to inexpensively exchange books right here on campus." DeBartolo said, "In using the campus email addresses, you limit the market to students on campus so you can get your books soon and make trade between students easy and convenient." "You can search the site with the title of your books, the author or ISBN number. When you look at the book the condition is listed as well as a rating. When one chooses to purchase a book, information of the buyer and seller are exchanged and they figure out when to meet or how they're going to exchange their books and money," DeBartolo added. DeBartolo and Walker said, "By limiting each market, we simultaneously offer the affordability of online booksellers and the convenience of the on-campus bookstore. No longer do students have to wait for books to be delivered from across the country, but from across the campus. And by allowing students to buy and sell directly to one another, the price of books for users will fall to an expected 50% of the list price, while net costs for each textbook will fall to an anticipated 15% of the list price." As of now, the monetary transactions are done between students by cash or check. In the future, DeBartolo and Walker want to use a Paypal System option that allows for online monetary transactions by credit card. The Campus Outlaw program functions independently of the school, so DeBartolo and Walker did not need to go through any special approval processes to jumpstart the book exchange. "We've built up this idea through competitions and got all of the bugs worked out before we actually launched it. We won a business plan competition sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Club and got help from alumni and faculty who wanted this to happen. They helped us a lot," said DeBartolo. "We then developed a prototype for Campus Outlaw but neither or us are really computer savvy so one of Steve's friends was able to put the website together for us in just a few weeks," DeBartolo added. As of now, there are 350 registered users (about 15% of the campus) on Campus Outlaw and there is $14,000 worth of books posted on the site. Walker said, "We opened the site this term for a free trial run and only after this term would we have to add a per-transaction fee to cover our costs of running the site. We would never charge a person to post a book though." Walker said, "We're also thinking about adding exchanges like DVD and videos that have ISBN numbers so people can use the site any time over the term, not just at the beginning or the end to buy books." DeBartolo said, "The only thing is that this causes people to have to hang on to their books and not lose them. They may have to hold them for a longer time than they would than if they were selling them to the bookstore." Tim Porter, bookstore assistant manager, said, "For us, this is just another internet service provider. It's a free enterprise system that we're in and we wish Campus Outlaw the best of luck in their operation." When asked if the bookstore feels that Campus Outlaw could affect their sales Porter said, "I think it'll be negligible overall, we will continue to stack all of the titles and we still feel that we have the the easiest way of getting books. Overall, our sales won't be affected to a large degree." "Time will tell with this program, if the students like the website then it could be very successful," Porter added. Freshman Jack Honor said, "So far, I've sold one of my books for more than the bookstore would have given me for it, so I'm pretty happy about it. Once more people start using [Campus Outlaw], it's going to be a lot more effective and successful." Jen Fleischer said, "I didn't use Campus Outlaw this term because it was new and I didn't know how to work it yet, but I want to use it next term especially because I got nothing back for my books from the bookstore." The bookstore will still continue to run the same selling and buy-back operation. To use Campus Outlaw, Union students can go to www.campusoutlaw.com and register with their campus email. |