Digging Further into Campus Bookstore Woes

Publishing marketing specialist Callie Oettinger may sound familiar to you because of her PR and marketing work with author Steven Pressfield. From time to time, she contributes to the What It Takes series of posts on Pressfield’s site.

In a recent article, she offered a look at one of the patterns of behavior common to campus bookstores when it comes to school-year orders for Pressfield’s books. His key title is The War of Art, now published by his own imprint, Black Irish Books (operated by Oettinger). We’ll use Oettinger’s recitation of a typical dialogue she has with a buyer from a university bookstore.

Them: Do you have The War of Art available?
Us: Yes.
Them: What is the discount?
Us: Fifty-five percent off orders of 10 copies or more.
Them: A professor wants six books for her class.
Us: It’s cheaper to buy 10 books.
Them: She only needs six.
Us: I know, but you’d save money if you bought 10.
Them: I’m only authorized to buy what the professor orders.
Us: Six books it is.

Oettinger’s reaction is a natural one—why wouldn’t the campus store take more books at the cheaper price, then pass the savings to students? (In the specific case Oettinger lays out, the store would save $6.45 on the total order of 10 books.) But the situation is more complicated than it may look on the surface. Here’s why:

• Bookstores are accustomed to returning for full credit what doesn’t sell. But Pressfield’s Black Irish Books is one of the few publishers that doesn’t allow for returns, so this increases the risk of buying more than what’s needed.
• Campus bookstores rarely have the infrastructure or processes to store extra books; each term brings a new set of books to order, and the shelves must be cleared to make way. If The War of Art is not returnable, the store is unlikely to save copies for another time—there’s no guarantee that book will be part of a future course.
• Perhaps most important, students are notorious for not buying books through the campus bookstore because better prices are offered online. They may also prefer to buy digital editions. The War of Art is a popular title now retailing on Kindle for $4 and available for $4 used at Amazon; how many students can be expected to buy at full print retail through the campus store?

This brings us to the larger problem now affecting every publisher and bookstore that serves the higher education market: the business is cratering. Pearson, the world’s largest publisher (as well as the world’s largest education publisher), announced a 15 percent decline in sales last year and a $3.4 billion pretax loss at the start of 2017—the largest in its history. Its suffering is directly related to the downturn in demand for traditional educational materials. Other large educational publishers have also seen revenue decline, as reflected in this Publishers Weekly chart.

Bottom line: Publishing is an industry full of arcane inefficiencies, and educational and textbook publishing is frequently pilloried for practices that seem to focus on increasing profits at the expense of cash-poor students. A closer look at publishing and sales practices do show business sense—if not always a concern for students’ costs—but the industry is about to undergo a dramatic transformation as students’ buying and consumption habits continue to shift.