Felicia Felmlee
Murphy News Service
Spring semester is approaching and that means one thing for sure: new textbooks.
The University of Minnesota Bookstore has made adjustments to better compete with online retailers.
Online retailers started to noticeably impact college store sales in 2010, Bob Crabb, director of the University of Minnesota Bookstore, said.
Amazon particularly influences The Bookstore, Crabb said.
“They’ve been around for a long time but they didn’t discount textbooks that heavily until the last four years and they’ve made inroad in the college store industry all together,” Crabb said.
The Bookstore has done a number of things to better compete with the online retailers such as starting a rental program, lowering prices, offering eBooks, and making it easy for students to purchase textbooks online.
The Bookstore has the lowest prices of any college store in the country right now, Crabb said.
“So when a student compares our pricing both new and used prices relative to Amazon, we’re much more competitive,” Crabb said. “They beat us sometimes and we beat them sometimes now.”
The Bookstore offers eBooks that typically sell at 45 to 50 percent less than the new book prices.
U of M students have the option to purchase textbooks from the bookstore’s website. The website links to each student’s registration records and pulls up the textbooks that student’s need.
The website also links to the students’ account and makes it simple to buy online, Crabb said.
“The ability to use the student account is a real benefit for them so then they can charge it off to their student financial aid, which a lot of time doesn’t kick in until after the start of the school year,” Crabb said.
The adjustments The Bookstore has made since 2010 sets the U of M Bookstore apart from other college stores who are being affected by Amazon.
“They haven’t affected us anywhere near as much in the last couple years as they have a lot of other college stores that haven’t taken those steps,” Crabb said.
Irene Franco, a junior studying sociology at the University of Minnesota finds that buying textbooks from The Bookstore is easier than buying textbooks from online retailers.
“It’s easier. I go abroad when I go home so I just get here the weekend before classes start and I get my books,” Franco said. “What I like is how easy it is a6nd that it’s charged to my U card so it’s just one big payment instead, you know, a million little things.”
Franco said she plans to purchase her textbooks for spring semester at The Bookstore.
Felicia is a senior studying psychology and journalism at the University of Minnesota.