In response to students' concerns about the Penn Bookstore's high textbook prices, Business Services and the Penn Bookstore managers are promoting the "My Textbooks" Web site that allows students to purchase their books online from the Bookstore.
The Web site is meant to emphasize the Bookstore's comparable prices relative to online vendors'. In catering to student demands, the Web site and the Bookstore now sell workbooks and textbooks separately or bundled.
For example, the Principles of Accounting 101 and Corporate Finance 100 coursepacks include the solution manual and the textbook. The price of an Accounting 101 package is $150.40, whereas the new textbook by itself costs only $121.80. The Finance 100 package is $168.60, and the textbook costs $127.35.
"When you bring up a course [online], or whether you're in front of the shelf, you'll have the package which is the textbook bundled with ... a solution manual or study guide or some kind of custom supplement, and then next to that you'll have the broken-down pieces as options," General Manager of Penn Bookstore Lew Claps said.
The Bookstore also responded to students' concerns by allowing them to select their classes and get a list of the books offered for each class through the Web site.
"One of the things that students had asked, for quite a while, was [to be] able to buy the textbooks online, so we actually rolled out publicly, through Campus Express, the "My Textbook[s]' service to give people that option, and we're really happy with the results," Director of Business Services Christopher Bradie said.
The Web site had a soft launch last fall. During the summer, the Penn Bookstore managers heavily advertised the Web site to attract the attention of students.
Claps also noted that the Penn Bookstore's efforts to satisfy faculty book orders earlier helped increase book inventories by 25 percent. Also, by getting books into the store earlier, the Bookstore was able to buy back books from students at about 50 percent of the initial cost, according to officials at the Bookstore.
"One major initiative was to get more used books in the store for the students through two ways: one, buying back books from the counter from students, and two, just going out and shopping the wholesale market," Claps said.
The Penn Bookstore managers had conducted a number of studies to compare their prices to those of online vendors.
"I think people are going to shop for prices becau---se those options are out there. But we have competitive pricing, and the pricing is comparable. I wanted to dispel the false position that you're gonna pay more at the Bookstore, because in some instances you actually pay less at the Bookstore," Bradie said.
The Penn Bookstore officials also discussed the disadvantages involved in shopping for books online.
"The only thing you have to be careful [about] is who are you buying [the book] from. What is their return policy? Are you going to get the right book? Are you going to get the right edition?" Claps said.
Claps also noted that students avoided online vendors because of the monetary risks.
You could be "buying directly from a reputable online retailer, but it could be the little guy down the street who is operating out of his garage and just happens to have copies of Campbell's Biology and [has] no way of getting the books to the UPS store to ship them, and you gave him your credit card information," Claps said. "Are you really dealing with reputable vendors?"
Though the Penn Bookstore is located on campus, Bradie emphasized that students have the option of buying books elsewhere.
"We really did think ... at the Penn Bookstore about the emergence of other markets. The fact is that the Bookstore does not have a monopoly. I mean, just bottom line, period," Bradie said.
