January 10, 2004
Bending to the Bookseller
Dr. Arnzen: I'm sorry to inform you that your textbook, _____, is out of stock til May 2004. It is being revised. -- The BookstoreYIKES! How would you respond if you got the above message in your e-mail inbox...two business days before classes begin?!
After pulling out several fistfulls of hair, I decided to just put the copy of the book that I have on reserve in the library and ask the students to access it that way. Revised or not, it's an important book for what I'm teaching (the text in question is Formatting Your Manuscript by Writer's Digest Books -- for my new "Publication Workshop" course -- and I doubt that the rules for ms format have changed much, beyond certain emergent conventions surrounding electronic submission). I thought about substituting a new book, but I may just use the sudden "empty space" on my syllabus to assign short articles (online and/or on reserve) instead.
I seem to encounter issues with books in my classes almost every semester. I don't blame my own bookstore -- and I've stopped thinking that I'm cursed. I think this happens to everone, everywhere. The way educational bookstores are run (especially on small campuses, where every dime counts) is very very strange. Sometimes the books just haven't been shipped -- a very common complaint. Partial orders come in, and only a handful of students have the book, while the remaining thirty students in the class complain and assume they can boycott homework until it arrives. Sometimes the publisher revises an edition without telling anyone (or at least without telling me, who once planned a syllabus around an outdated book and had to scramble to revise the entire term plan!). Once I called in the bookstore to add a book to my class. The person on the other end of the line apparently thought that meant I would ONLY be teaching out of that one book and cancelled the remaining four books for the class!
Like I said, I don't really blame the campus bookseller. They've got a lot of competition to deal with -- from used suppliers like eBay and half.com and Joe Student to the local chains like Waldenbooks and Barnes and Noble. I don't really understand the economics of their business, but I believe they make most of their money from selling merchandise other than textbooks (even though I'm sure those books gouge out a profit of 10-25% on the list price), and that most of that profit goes straight to the institution or campus that sponsors the bookseller. It must be hard for them to handle orders from instructors that come in at different times during the year -- and most of those orders come in way past the "deadline" that establish enough time for freight shipping to make its way to campus in time for classes, I believe. They also can't predict how many students will be enrolling, so they don't quite know how many books to order...too big a surplus and you've got shipping issues and costly return labor; too small an order, and students line up to complain and the faculty breathe down your neck. It must not be easy being a campus bookstore.
They're trying to do new things to make their customers -- students -- satisfied. To compete with online companies that target them, 98% of all college bookstores have had to turn to online services, with mixed results. Some have sold out completely to chains or huge distributors like B&N or Follett -- and only 54% of bookstores in our country remain owned by the colleges themeselves. College bookstores have tried everything from moving to downtown locations to giving away free beer to attract more customers.
There are things booksellers can do to make the faculty happy, too (and not just by giving us beer...though it's a start!). Our bookstore hosts a faculty appreciation night one day a year (maybe twice?) to give us discounts on gift shopping. They send out reminders with lists of the books we ordered last semester and make it easy to re-order them if we don't have any changes. Is there more they could do? Probably. Maybe give us discounts year-round. Maybe reach out to us as sort of "agents" rather than customers -- maybe give us more incentives to use their services in a timely way, like playing matchmaker with publishing company representatives. They might send out reminders to ask us if we have any of our own books to stock, or send out surveys regarding what we'd like to sell through them. Maybe put out their own "new in the bookstore" newsletter, featuring books and merchandise that we all might buy. I can't speak for other campus' bookshops, but I usually only hear from mine when they sound out a letter to faculty, reminding them that the deadline for orders has passed and that they better get to it. I'm sure there's more they -- and I -- could do to improve our relationship.
But like I said -- I don't blame them. They've got their hands full with all sorts of problems to juggle. I think all bookstores do. As a writer, teacher, and scholar, I've been witness to many changes in the bookselling economy -- and none of it has been very pretty. I'd like to think that the internet and open source textbooks are the future, but I've been hearing the same thing about electric automobiles my whole lifetime, too, in regard to energy crises and wars. The fact is, profit-making will guide the system until the back breaks in any commercial endeavor. Right now it's bending.
Okay, so I went from complaining about one book's revision (which is really the publisher's fault) to the collapse of the entire bookstore economy in this blog entry. Some hasty generalizations in there. Just musing aloud...."my actual thoughts will not be available until May 2004; they are currently being revised. -- The Author"
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Comments
Good thing that appears to be the one book I forgot to buy online! Not that I really have any of my other books yet...blame it on the mail, right?
We have about 800 students in our composition program (100, 101 and 102) but the campus bookstore *always* undercuts our book order by 40% or more. After two semesters of frustration with ordering different books for my online classes, I decided to follow-up regularly for the third and ultimately final attempt. This time, the book was ordered, although it arrived two weeks late.
So... this semester, I decided to just use the default textbooks assigned to 102, even if half of my students won't be able to buy the books, either because the bookstore ran out or the students just don't have the money. I use various online readings and scanned pages, too, to supplement what the textbook doesn't provide. It's not a perfect solution, but I got tired of the bookstore fooling around with the order.
Sorry to respond at such length to an old entry, but I may have some insight into the issues you raise. An academic, I'm also the child of a professor and a college bookstore textbook manager. Sounds like an unlikely union, I know, but it means I've been privy to complaints on both sides. When the textbook manager gets orders from professors, s/he relies on a complex set of information from semesters past. Simply ordering the number of books a professor requests could potentially cause a profit loss for the bookstore because the bookstore must sell any remainders back to the publisher at a loss. Many potential causes contribute to having too many books: more used textbook buybacks at the end of the previous semester than projected, fewer students enrolling in a class than expected, students sharing books or buying used books from each other or other stores on-line or physical--the list goes on. The challenge that the textbook manager faces is buying exactly the right number of books so that the bookstore can sell as many as possible to students and as few as possible back to the publisher.
My mother always dreaded the beginning of each semester because there were always angry students and professors, and she often said that if professors put their orders in on time, the maddening dance of never enough books might end. She saw herself as an intermediary between the campus community and the publishers, and she ultimately quit when the conflicting demands became unbearable.
I've been witness to this on all sides: as a student, as a teacher, as my mother's listener, and as an employee of a publishing company.
The suggestions arnzen gives for improving communication between bookseller and academic are great. Approach your bookstore with ideas about how they could better serve you, but wait until the middle of the semester to do so, when the pain of thwarted commerce has faded somewhat.
cheers, k
It's not just small colleges. I went to one of the biggest state universities in the country, and we still had problems. The undercutting of orders was very problematic. Our bookstores do it across the board. It works for common English books, because you can find those at any good bookstore. The problem arises from harder to obtain books. In one of my classes, we got assigned a book that was set to be printed, in England, halfway through the semester. My prof was friends with the writer and had it all worked out. The bookstore only ordered enough for 80% of the class. The book wasn't set to be actually released for another 4 months to the general public. Where did they think the rest of us would get the book from? It also doesn't help that the bookstores have a monopoly at U of M. They are all owned by different people for tax reasons, and to aviod being called a monopoly. But, on is owned by the mother, one by the father, one by their son, and one by their daughter. Hmmm. They don't talk about this stuff do they? It's just a coincidence that they all charge the same amount for everything (most often above the publisher's suggested retail). Everyone has horror stories about wrong books. I was in one class that got filed wrong. All the books for one class got switched with all the books for another class. Those who were on top of things and bought the (non-returnable) books before the first day of class got screwed. This happens fairly often if the profs have the same, or similar names; especially when husband and wife both teach in the same department.
I jumped on the internet textbook sellers as soon as they came out. I've saved hundreds of dollars with surprisingly few headaches. It's simple capitalism. If you fail to do a good job, a new provider will come along to replace you. While most will still get their books from standard bookstores, I find it hard to feel sorry for people who did such a bad job that they forced their patrons elsewhere. Granted, my experiences may not be the norm.
I've tried to design my own courses to provide for prospective schools I interview at. Many like the idea of The Werewolf in Literature and Film, but I can't seem to find good books that stay in print long enough to use on my syllabus. This is one area I think really needs POD technology.
Well, you could always assume that none of your students will crack the book until the night before your first exam, anyway...
(Yeah, I know, there's always a bunch of over-achievers. I had students asking for the reading assignments for my class the week before christmas.)