Albert Greco, professor of marketing at Fordham
University, has predicted the market for printed textbooks will tumble about
95% by 2017. While that certainly paints a bleak picture for bricks-and-mortar
booksellers, it doesn’t necessarily mean college stores should transition completely
to being clothing outlets, according to Tony Sanfilippo in his Content Storage
Unit blog.
Sanfilippo imagines a new campus store that partners
with the library to offer students the option to either purchase or borrow
their course materials. Librarians would be in charge of distributing the books
and would help faculty find lower-cost or free alternatives.
He sees a store that utilizes a patron-driven acquisition
business model where publishers find campuses with the most interest in their new
text and make it available essentially on consignment basis for a fixed number
of months. Stores would also become a dedicated place on campus where students
and faculty go to locate alternatives to commercial publishing.
“Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with textbook prices,
perhaps all faculty already see all the new scholarship in their respective
fields at conferences, and maybe writing and publishing centers aren’t
something campus communities need. Maybe,” Sanfilippo wrote. “But it seems much
more likely that what most folks on campuses don’t need is another opportunity
to purchase a tee shirt.”
