The University’s bookstore’s rental sales surged 17 percent this semester compared to a year ago, but saw an overall decline in revenue as it faces increasing competition from digital textbook retailers.
The number of textbook rentals reached 8,200 this week, Robert Blake, the store’s director, said. But as rental sales soar and digital options expand, the bookstore is struggling to make a profit from textbooks.
Blake said the bookstore’s total revenue has waned over the last decade as consumers see new buying options, but declined to provide figures or say how the bookstore plans to specifically make up for the loss.
“With increased competition and a sharper focus on accessibility, we’re largely focused on affordable options – driving rental and digital to improve student savings,” Blake said. He added that the bookstore’s primary goal is University-wide access to the course materials “regardless of format or buying option.”
Overall, the number of borrowed books has jumped more than 25 percent since the bookstore launched its rental program in 2010, Blake said. Through the Rent-a-Text program, students saved more than $750,000 this semester, up from about $150,000 at the same time last fall.
Blake said 30 percent of textbooks are rent eligible this spring – a figure that is on par with last fall – at about half the cost of their selling prices. The bookstore will continue to add rentable options from the textbook provider Follett, the nation’s largest text rental organization.
Seeking to compete with e-book purchases and rentals, the store is also expanding its existing 300-title digital selection run by CafeScribe. The books can be read on computers, iPads, iPhones and Kindles.
This year, 7 percent of titles in GW’s textbook library are available in e-book form, up from 1 percent of titles last year.
“We expect digital titles to increase exponentially,” Blake said, adding that, next year, the store hopes to offer about 40 percent of textbooks digitally to shoulder its way into the emerging electronic textbooks market.
Apple unveiled plans last week to create a digital textbook service, one day after the textbook retailer Chegg announced its new digital textbook service. Amazon kicked off its e-book efforts this fall when it launched a digital rental system allowing Kindle users to pay for content only when they want to use it, allowing them to borrow from 30 to 360 days.
Blake said many students choose to buy or rent from the brick-and-mortar store instead of online textbook distributors, for instant pick up, easy returns and a GWorld payment option. He added that about 35 percent of sales – totaling 3,000 orders this spring – are Web orders.
Kayla Duffy, a freshman, said she likes purchasing supplies from the bookstore because she doesn’t have to wait for the items to be shipped.
“I use Amazon when its cheaper, but I would rather use the bookstore,” Duffy said while picking up her textbooks this week.
Freshman John Goncalves said he rented most of his textbooks from the bookstore this semester, purchasing just one book from Amazon because he said the cost online was comparable to that at the bookstore.
“It wasn’t worth waiting and paying for shipping to save a couple bucks when I could pick them up [at the bookstore],” Duffy said.
