The Art of Textbook Ordering in a Pandemic

The store panelists of the CAMEX21 educational session Right-Sizing Your Textbook Orders in the Times of COVID-19 shared what they’ve learned about estimating order quantities, tools that can help, communicating with faculty and students—and a couple pitfalls to avoid.

Panelists were Erryn deBlois, manager, Catawba Valley Community College Campus Store, Hickory, NC; Kurt Kaiser, assistant director, Colorado State University Bookstore, Fort Collins; and Mary Riker, manager, Maria College Bookstore, Albany, NY. Facilitating the session were Nicole Gallo, executive director of sales and marketing for Rittenhouse, and Adam Barrett, national accounts manager for Rittenhouse.

“Things have definitely changed” in the past year, Gallo said. Among the trends she has seen at Rittenhouse are a drop in overall sell-through coupled with a high rate of returns from stores. One exception to that has been bundles, which are “still selling at a pretty good clip,” she said. Not surprisingly, digital course materials sales are up quite a bit, given the shift to online instruction. Where inclusive access programs have been put in place, those materials are also selling well, both digital and print components.

She cautioned stores to be more aware of all online competition out there, not just Amazon; these days students have numerous options for acquiring their materials.

For the three panelists, the process for ordering, stocking, and selling course materials has changed a lot due to the pandemic.

Both Kaiser and deBlois said they follow an “order early, order often” practice to ensure they’ve got the materials available before classes start and can adjust quantities as needed. Kaiser sources used print books first, then other formats. DeBlois also pursues used print copies, although her store does offer digital options and she’s been ordering more e-books (Catawba Valley doesn’t have inclusive access). 

“I had a lot of publisher delays, especially with custom products,” deBlois said. That was among the reasons she decided to order 5% more than usual, to make sure the store had enough copies and could avoid reordering.

Riker’s focus has been on new and used print as well as the store’s in-house rental program. Maria College is a small campus with commuter students, and use of digital course materials has been low. For fall 2020 semester, students were permitted to come on campus to purchase books, but by spring the college required students to show proof of a COVID test before they could enter campus.

“That kept students away,” Riker said, as students didn’t want to bother with the test. They bought or rented their materials somewhere else. “We saw a huge dip in sales,” she said.

Kaiser also has been adding 5% to textbook orders in order to have plenty of stock so students can get what they need right away. He offers whatever format students want and runs a rental program in partnership with a wholesaler, although rentals have gone down. 

Both deBlois and Kaiser monitor enrollment reports constantly for fluctuations in class size, so they can adjust orders. At CSU, students can still drop and add courses two and a half weeks into the term, and Kaiser is finding that students just don’t enroll as early as they used to. Catawba Valley has open enrollment, and class counts may vary term to term.

Before the pandemic, Riker used to be able to go to faculty offices or just stop and chat if she saw a professor around campus. In the past year that hasn’t been possible, and communication with faculty has suffered. “The campus store was forgotten about,” she said.

Riker admitted the store could have communicated better with faculty upfront about the store’s ability to secure course materials despite the shutdown. As a result, several classes switched to open resources “and I didn’t know,” she said.

For the fall term, most faculty at Maria College didn’t submit adoptions until July; the same was true for deBlois at Catawba Valley, even though she typically works with department heads and deans on adoptions. For Kaiser, though, faculty communications improved when classes went online.

“Faculty were on their email a lot more often than usual,” he said. Also, departmental coordinators usually collect adoptions but there has been considerable turnover among coordinators due to early retirement buyouts, so now some faculty are taking responsibility for submitting adoptions to the store. His adoption rate has gone up 10%.

DeBlois developed a new adoption form that instructors could fill out online, but discovered some instead were printing it and filling it out longhand.

Communications with students has also been a challenge. Kaiser and deBlois both use social media to get information out, while Riker is in the process of creating a Facebook site for the store separate from the school’s. DeBlois was able to use email to send out details about how students could order materials online—an especially useful tool during the time the physical store wasn’t open for business (although students still showed up). Kaiser can’t send unsolicited email to students except when messages pertain to textbook rentals and inclusive access, but it’s been possible to add some information about other things at the bottom of those emails. Riker previously had to work through the campus communications department to email students, but then found she could use the store’s new point-of-sale system to handle that.

With the uncertainty of enrollment and sell-through, bin and hold services have been helpful for managing textbook orders. DeBlois uses the service for classes that don’t have high sell-through. At Maria College, nursing is one of the largest classes; Riker uses bin and hold to control the flow of hundreds of nursing books through her very small store space. 

Bin and hold services typically allow a store to order a quantity of books to be held by the publisher until the store is ready for some or all to be shipped. The store can increase the quantity held or release books if the store’s sure they won’t be needed; only the shipped copies are invoiced. The service guarantees the books will be available when the store needs them and can be shipped within a few days. As Gallo explained, publishers would rather encumber quantities of books than deal with returns later on.