The book dude arrives on campus early Saturday afternoon, doling
out textbooks to students from a black SUV parked in front of
Ackerman Union.
Dressed in a blue, short-sleeved button-up shirt, khakis and
sandals, Steven Sun, who owns bookdude.com, is unfazed by the slow
business that day.
Students get lazy on weekends, he says with a chuckle, or forget
to come and pick up the books they ordered online. It’s not a
big deal, because “it all works out” in the end, he
says.
The 28-year-old entrepreneur started bookdude.com in late 2001,
and began selling books on the domain name winter quarter 2002. Sun
works as a computer consultant but runs bookdude.com on the
side.
“I’ve always known that money could be made ““
the book prices are so much. If you look at the profit margin,
(bookstores) are making a killing,” Sun said.
Sun was living in Santa Monica at the time bookdude.com became a
reality, so UCLA was the targeted campus when the site opened.
In addition to picking up books directly from Sun, who comes to
campus daily the first week of each quarter, UCLA students can have
the goods shipped.
Sun delivers on-campus residents’ midnight orders by 5:00
p.m. the next day to the front desks of dormitories.
The site also features a UCLA-only section, which lists books
available by class.
Sun says while bookdude.com’s focus is on the natural
sciences, he’s branching out to include more social science
and other courses as well. He looks for classes with high
enrollment and ones with more expensive textbooks so he can offer
better discounts while still carving a profit.
Some bookdude.com prices on new textbooks closely mimic those
posted on the UCLA store’s Web site.
But bookdude.com offers discounts to customers. For the past
week, UCLA students could get 10 percent off orders, and tax was
included in list prices.
Sun’s college buddy Lorens San Pedro, 28, started a
delivery branch of bookdude.com in Austin, Texas, where the two
went to college together and where San Pedro still lives.
San Pedro says his interest in the business was motivated by the
“monopoly” campus bookstores have over markets at
colleges and universities.
When he began studying at the University of Texas, Austin in
1994, there were at least three separately owned textbook stores
serving the student body. The only one that remains is sponsored by
the school, he says.
“Students don’t really have a choice now,” he
says. “Now that I’ve stepped onto the campus, I give
them the only alternative. … I’m getting a lot of
appreciation for that.”
San Pedro adds that though other stores were open nearby when he
was a student, “we were so brainwashed by the university:
“˜Go to the textbook store.'”
Sun says the atmosphere at UCLA mirrors the one in Austin, with
freshmen relying on the university bookstore because it’s the
obvious choice.
Incoming students “really don’t go through the
sticker shock” until they realize other book-buying options
are out there, he said.
But after a while, Sun says, “They realize, wow, this book
is really expensive.” That’s when bookdude.com and
other internet services can start to play a role, he adds.
Linda Vuong, a third-year psychobiology student, stopped on
campus Saturday to pick up a book, taking only a minute off her
cellular phone conversation to give Sun the details of her
order.
She said she had used only the UCLA store and Textbooks Plus on
Westwood Boulevard, but she plans to check bookdude.com regularly
after her friend suggested she take a look.
The free, next-day delivery is key, she said.
Second-year psychology and sociology student Rosemarie Caroche,
who came by about 10 minutes later, said she and her roommate
bought six or seven books from bookdude.com. Students are spared
from standing in long lines in Ackerman, and the prices are lower,
she said.
“We’re big penny pinchers,” she said.
“We need to save money.”
The business Sun started to fill what he called a
“niche” in the textbook market has grown rapidly over
the past few years, with 650 students at UCLA purchasing an average
of two books at bookdude.com quarterly.
The numbers per academic term at the University of Texas are
about the same, and at UC Irvine, where another branch exists, the
pool of customers is about half as large.
Sun says with a shrug that operating bookdude.com is not work he
enjoys, but it lets him make a little extra cash on the side.
He said he chose the domain name after deciding against
“textbookmart” and other less catchy options. In some
ways, he says, it embodies his personality.
“There’s book dudes at each campus,” he says.
“But the original guy, I guess that’s me.”