NACS Holds Pep Rally
John Mutter -- 5/15/00
After a year 'not for the faint-hearted,'
college booksellers share strategies, prepare for future
Booksellers at last month's National Association of College Stores annual meeting and CAMEX show, held in the gargantuan Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., didn't feel giddy triumph so much as a sense that they are prevailing--so far--in the difficult battle against online-only textbook retailers, most notably VarsityBooks.com and BigWords.com.
Of course, Varsity's continuing, dramatic drop in share price and its announcement after the show that it is changing its focus (and eventually its name) to become more of a marketer, only made traditional college booksellers happier.
A number of speakers and others commented on the change in mood among college booksellers--from fear last year to confidence now.
As Cynthia D'Angelo, senior associate executive director of NACS, said, "It's been an exciting year for college bookstores. It was not for the faint-hearted. Who would have thought the attacks would be so vicious and that we would have to fight?"
D'Angelo also called the challenge from online-only textbook retailers "a wakeup call" that caused "all of us to look at how we're being perceived and tell our story." She added, "It's not over yet. They maybe made a few mistakes, but we shouldn't get too comfortable." Still, she continued, "All in all I think we did really well."
And the college booksellers sounded eager to take any and every advantage. For example, Don Bonnewell, book division manager at NCSU Bookstores, joked that for years he had fought shrink-wrapped textbook packages and bundles. But because they're exclusive to his store, now "I encourage coursepacks," he said. "They're a wonderful thing."
The Call to E-Commerce
Many college booksellers are adopting the online stores' main weapon: e-commerce. Seminars on how to convert to a clicks-and-mortar model were jammed, and on the trade show floor, booksellers compared the various turnkey e-commerce solutions, including NACS's own CollegeStoreOnline, Follett's eFollett.com, which is open to non-Follett stores, and CampusHub.com, a subsidiary of Nebraska Book Co.
Previewed at the show, CampusHub is rolling out this summer and will be a portal that allows college booksellers to go "beyond selling what's in the store," as chief operating officer Barry S. Major said. The site will allow student users to buy airline tickets, do job searches, find insurance, cars--"anything the student wants."
For its part, CollegeStoreOnline is in its second year of operation. Already more than 200 stores are using it, and at least another 100 have signed up to begin using it in time for the beginning of the next school year in September. Baker & Taylor; Ingram Micro, the computer products wholesaler; Matthews Medical Books; Arrow Distributing, a music wholesaler; C2F Inc., an office and school supplies wholesaler; and Nacscorp, NACS's trade book and software wholesaler, have all signed on to make their products available through the service.
Surprisingly, at least two young men wearing BigWords's signature orange jumpsuits roamed the floor. Besides the bravery required to show up, they were well-behaved: no superballs were thrown, and no messages in chalk appeared on the floors of the Opryland Hotel.
A Mobilized Association
It was striking how much the support of the college stores' association had helped members weather the storm. In contrast to the American Booksellers Association, which still d sn't have an e-commerce site for members more than five years after Amazon.com's founding, NACS began work on its CollegeStoreOnline.com, née CourseWeb, two years ago.
Moreover, the association supplied marketing materials, including ad slicks that many members used in effective promotional campaigns against the e-tailers. Several panelists described in detail how they used and adapted the material.
Also, late last year, the association filed suit against VarsityBooks.com for false and misleading advertising, mainly about discounts that the site offers, a key attraction for students. The association has written letters of complaint on similar grounds to BigWords.com and eCampus.com, the Wallace Bookstores site. (BigWords has since changed its advertising.) Although the lawsuit is still pending, it has had some effect: VarsityBooks has altered its advertising, which has caused the association not to ask for an injunction.
NACS's counsel, Marc Fleischaker of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, Washington, D.C., said that he gives Varsity "credit" for guaranteeing that it will offer at least 10% of its titles at the highly advertised 40% discount. (He did note, however, that those books may be the least-popular titles Varsity offers.)
Fleischaker emphasized that NACS's suit d s not seek monetary damages. The point is to create a level playing field and have everyone follow the law. He added that the suit had nothing to do with Varsity's initial public offering.
Additionally, the association had investigated other e-tailers, including Barnes & Noble College's textbooks.com and eFollett.com, but found that they did not claim specific discounts, if any, and were thus not objectionable. "We did not pick on anyone," Fleischaker commented. "We tried to look broadly at all sites."
Overall, Fleishaker said that "pursuing this advocacy approach" had had a "very positive result for NACS and its member stores."
Concerning the short-discount issue, which led to a lawsuit several years ago, Fleischaker said that generally "there has been a movement toward fairness, but we're not there yet."
In other news from the show, NACS is opening its Nacscorp subsidiary to non-NACS members. The association will promote the service to general booksellers at BEA in Chicago.
Nuts and Bolts
Many panels either touched on or focused on issues related to the new online-only textbook retailers. Panelists were a font of advice about effective strategies. Among the many concrete suggestions for college booksellers, culled from a variety of workshops:
**first and foremost, set up an e-commerce Web site (an informational Web site is not enough);
**promote the Web site via newspapers, fliers and postcards, on the radio, with the URL on bags and receipts, even T-shirts;
** advertise the Web site and its URL;
** make connections with a range of groups on campus, including the administration, faculty, press office, campus newspaper and student council, and regularly attend meetings of campus groups;
** partner with publishers to sell to faculty and conduct demonstrations of new products with faculty and a rep;
** highlight faculty books, including signed copies, online;
** emphasize that much of the money students spend in their local bookstores stays on campus;
** find out how many packages arrive in the campus post office from Varsity, Amazon and BigWords to see how popular these competitors are;
** offer textbook reservation programs for freshmen to introduce them to the store and demonstrate the store's customer service standards;
** examine every message the store sends out, from fixtures that might need updating to the overall marketing plan, and think like a customer;
** do coursepacks and custom publishing, which involves faculty with the store and pleases students who view custom textbooks as more of a value than traditional texts;
** put a page in all coursepacks about the store's Web site;
** advertise in student planners;
** give out gift certificates online that are redeemable in the store;
** put pictures of students and of campus events on the Web site.
The Next Challenges
Although college booksellers have had to grapple with unusual competitive threats in the past year, there's much more to contend with in the immediate future--mostly because of technological and demographic changes already beginning to take place. A panel on "The Impact of Technology on Higher Education," conducted by Stephen Hochheiser, director of campus marketing for Thomson Learning, and Melanie Sparks, director of the University of New Mexico Bookstore, outlined some of these trends.
Enrollments are expected to leap in the next few years, with the biggest increases occurring in nontraditional areas, such as students over the age of 35. Students will continue to be on the cutting edge of technology. Already they are the "most wired" segment of society; a huge portion of them access the Internet more than four times a day.
Computer ownership is mandatory at more than 50 schools, while many others require "constant access" or leasing arrangements. Some schools are customizing computers for the students.
As measured by the popularity of items bought online, the Internet has already become mainstream. Whereas software was the most popular purchase online a few years ago, now the most popular items sold include CDs and books, and for students, the Internet is a bigger "study aid" than such traditional sources as libraries.
Distance learning--learning via television, teleconferencing, the Internet and e-mail--is becoming ever more popular. Distributed learning--teaching via computer that is often interactive--is expected to involve 2.2 million students by 2002, and is especially prevalent at two-year schools.
Some companies are already establishing virtual schools. For example, Kaplan, best known for its test preparation guides and courses, has opened an online law school. Harcourt Learning Direct has set up an independent university that offers B.A. and Master's degrees.
Technological advances are leading to highly sophisticated educational software that "hopefully you'll sell," as Hochheiser put it. These programs include the Virtual Rat, a program that allows science students to dispense with lab rats, and Planetarium, which helps astronomy students learn about the night sky.
Between digital downloading of texts, interactive digital texts, distance learning and increasingly sophisticated educational software, "there are a smorgasbord of choices for creating our own educational experience," Melanie Sparks said. "We're going from a department store concept to a cafeteria concept." The traditional store will have many challenges--and opportunities.
LMP Award: Authors' Voices at NACS
As always, one of the highlights of the NACS meeting was the Monday morning book and author breakfast hosted, as usual, by the gracious Parker Ladd, a v-p of Literacy Partners and producer of Open Book on A&E.
This year's theme was "Voices of Our Time," and most of the authors made connections to college bookstores that were appreciated by the audience.
Melissa Bank, author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, who said that she became a reader at college, learned to prepare for classes while teaching at Cornell by going to the college store. There, she said, she could "familiarize myself with titles so I'd seem well read."
Randall Kenan, author of Walking on Water, and currently a professor at the University of Memphis, confessed that he was "late in getting book orders in for the fall." He also praised the Bull's Head, the store at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater, which he called an "extraordinary place for me. It had lots of exotic things on its shelves. I'd hid there and meet Czech and Japanese writers."
Ann Beattie talked about the "painful process" of going back 25 years to read some of her older short stories for a new collection, Park City. "I personally lost track with the person who wrote the earlier stories," she said. She defended her trademark approach of naming products by, well, trademark, saying that "items are cultural artifacts for me."
Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, said his favorite bookstore is the UConn Co-op, Storrs, Conn.: "It's always enticing; you can browse and browse." Lamb then read a delightful story called "Twisted Sisters," about his siblings and published in Allure magazine.
--Jim Milliot |
Two B&Ns Opening Soon
Barnes & Noble will be one of the anchors of the new "entertainment wing" of the Eden Prairie Center, in Eden Prairie, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. The shopping center, at the intersection of Highway 494 and Highway 212, is currently being renovated, and will expand by 20% to 1.1 million square feet. The number of retailers will jump to 100 from 30. The 25,000-sq.-ft. B&N will co-anchor the entertainment wing with an 18-screen theater operated by AMC Theaters, both opening next year. The rest of the mall will include a 135,000-sq.-ft. Target Greatland. Current tenants include Kohl's, Mervyn and Sears.
Barnes & Noble also plans to open a 25,000-sq.-ft. store in the Camp Hill Mall in Camp Hill, Pa., a suburb of Harrisburg, the capital. The store will open in the fall.
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