Selling Textbooks in an electronic age

[Liz Hale]

There are lots of issues with texts....texts have been the bane of students since ...well, since forever.

I plan to discuss a bunch of what's going on in the "e" field since I think some of the applications and solutions are especially important in the field of elearning. However I can't help but reprint this letter of frustration a collegue sent to Cengage (who is Thomson who is Delmar who is a bunch of others) Publishing. We at the bookstore lvl are being taken out of the distribution link in a faster harsher way than ever before. That's not necessarily a bad thing mind you, but there are all sorts of implications for our students and our schools. I've started another blog about it (look for "death of the traditional college bookstore") but it's taking more time and thought than I expected. In the meantime, here's Kathy's letter and publisher response.

Friends,

Below is a copy of an e-mail message that I sent to Stephen Hochheiser at Cengage (Thomson) this morning. It should go without saying but I'll say it anyway. This has nothing to do with my position on the NACS Board. This is my personal opinion and my personal choice of action as the director of the bookstore here at Swarthmore. I thought I would share the message with you as a "heads up" that Cengage/iChapters is increasing the push for direct-to-student sales (at least on our campus).

K

_____

There is an iChapters advertisement on our daily student eNews. "Save up to 25% on Textbooks. Save more with single chapters" and then a link to the iChapters web site. We get the Daily Gazette via e-mail and when you click on an article, it takes you to the web site. No matter what article you click on, the advertisement is there at the top of the right column.

When I get to the iChapters web site from the Daily Gazette site, I find that Thomson is now offering a 20% "special" discount from their prices which are already priced to "save up to 25%." So, for example, our invoice price on a BUNDLE that we have with you is $128.48. We're selling it, with a 20% margin, at $160.60 (if we used a 25% margin, it'd be $171.30).

You are offering the book at a starting price of $132.99 with a 20% special discount for a net of $106.39.

This is the PRINT version of the BUNDLE that we are STOCKING. This is just one example. Almost all of our Thomson titles are available on iChapters-including the bundles. How the heck (points to me for watching my language) is this supposed to promote the sale of more new books?! And lets not even go to sell-through discussions....

We keep trying to reach out and find a way that we can continue to sell Thomson new books on our campus. And Thomson keeps slapping us in the face.

I've told you over and over that we can't send our customers to your site when it PROVES, in our students' minds, that "all" of our new books are over-priced. And once you've got them shopping online, why not look farther to places like Amazon Marketplace and half.com for even cheaper used books?

That IS what our students are doing, you know. Our post office tracks the increasing quantity of hand-written labels on the boxes of what they identify as books at the beginning of each semester (in other words, our students are buying used books from peer-to-peer sites not new books from other online sources). Your iChapters practices are just making that worse.

As I told you before, our getting more than 7% (100) of our students to click through to the iChapters site from our site would have been almost impossible. But now that they can click through from the Daily Gazette, there is absolutely no chance for that to happen. And your affiliate program doesn't address my concern about the price perception issue because your print books are STILL significantly less than our in-store prices even with only a 20% margin.

I don't know what else to say, Stephen. You and I have had many, many conversations about how we might sell more new books on our campus. But nothing ever comes of those conversations. And now iChapters is aggressively advertising to take our in-store sales away-even the bundles (where if they are "good bundles" where the faculty member really uses the components, students should all be buying the new book bundles that we buy from you and stock in our store). WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! How does this practice sell more new books?!

Well, I realize that Swarthmore's business won't make or break Thomson. But to my thinking, you have thrown down the gauntlet and I have to respond.

You have told me very clearly that you want the new book sales on our campus. So, I give up. You can have them. I have spoken with our book manager. I will assist him in any way necessary to satisfy our identified campus need with used books. We will discourage your bundles (which, by the way, we have never done before). We will encourage our faculty to allow us to satisfy demand with old editions of Thomson titles (another thing we have never done before). We will buy Thomson titles on Amazon Marketplace and half.com whenever possible (again, a new practice for us). My goal will be to give you what you want-all of the new book sales on our campus.

Congratulations. You win.

Kathy

Kathleen K. Grace

Director, Swarthmore College Bookstore

500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081

[phone], [phone] fax

[e-mail]

www.bookstore.swarthmore.edu

The response from the Stephen at Cengage:

Kathy,

I know you have been copied on the email exchange below between Bob and me but I wanted to contact you directly to apologize for not replying to you earlier today. I see that you sent the original message to me at 9AM my time and you must have been wondering why you hadn’t heard back from me in a timely manner. Our office is going through an email migration this week and many messages have been lost and it also appears that a few of our employees no longer exist.

You can see below that I am checking with the iChapters.com group on a couple of things in response to your message. However, I do want to address some of your points now:

- We did not place any ads in any campus newspapers or on any campus newspaper sites.

- It appears to me that the 20% additional discount on the iChapters.com site is for study tools, not textbooks. The goal would be generate another mini-rush period by encouraging students to purchase study guides, workbooks, etc. that would help them prepare for mid-terms. Affiliate stores would get a share of this incremental revenue.

- A significant percentage of college students are buying course materials online (through non-college-store sites) already. Rather than give up that marketshare completely, we are trying to capture some of those sales and share them with college stores.

- We have spent considerable effort developing sophisticated marketing tools that are available for college stores to help them recapture some of the sales they are losing to other online sites.

- The vast majority of college stores do everything they can to maximize their stock of used books on backlist titles (I know you have stated to me in the past that you are an exception to that practice). The site’s 25% discount is on those titles – we are trying to recapture some of those sales that we have lost to used books.

- Contrary to your statement that nothing has come of our past conversations, I think they have been very informative and productive. We have both been educated about the other’s concerns, motivations and actions and iChapters.com specifically developed the affiliate store discount on print backlist based on your suggestion.

While it’s clear that you have forwarded your original email to others, I do not have the benefit of knowing who they are. I would appreciate your forwarding my response to them, also, so they can be exposed to both sides of the story.

I will get back to you again after I have spoken with the iChapters.com people tomorrow.

Thanks,

Stephen

[Liz Hale]

We understand that texts are expensive...and know that students look elsewhere. That's one of the reasons we ask instructors if they will accept mixed editions, used books, etc....we are also trying to get the best deals for students. (bookstores, by the way, get a bit of a better margin on a used book, so we like them financially too!!)

Publishers only want to sell new books...they don't get their money from used. So they are trying everything to get the bookstores to only sell new...they encourage bundles (like with e-access codes!!!!!!!!) and other things to prevent used books.
Example: Intermediate Algebra. I got the book (new) from a distributor for LESS than from the publisher (don't get me started). Had to return them because the instructor wanted to add a e-learning componant. IF I ordered the book from the publisher, componant $5. If I just ordered componant (like to go with my current stock or used) cost to bookstore $50 before freight.

[Jen]

Wow! Many instructors I've worked with encourage their students to buy from amazon and half, or they tell students to check out the texts from the library reserve. Thanks for bringing this to the front of our minds!