Book center textbook sales continue tumble

Fee hikes will help Stamp Student Union close $1.4 million budget gap

Published: Thursday, October 8, 2009

Updated: Friday, October 9, 2009 01:10

Textbook sales at the University Book Center have continued to slide, forcing officials to make up the difference with an increase in student fees.

Stamp Student Union Director Gretchen Metzelaars said students' migration to online book sellers has hit the center's bottom line, adding that the university abetted the bleeding in fall 2008 when it began releasing information to make it easier for students to shop around.

Since that fall when the university first released textbooks' ISBN codes on Testudo, the book center's textbook sales have fallen by $1.4 million, Metzelaars said. This year, a less profitable contract with Barnes & Noble went into effect, making matters even worse.

Student union officials are requesting a $16.44 fee increase for full-time undergraduate students for fiscal year 2011 — a 12-percent increase. The request adds to $165 in new undergraduate fees that administrators proposed last month and one year after fees decreased by 86 cents.

"Textbook sales have just tanked," Metzelaars said. "Since we started putting the [ISBN] numbers up in 2008, there was a slow loss in textbook sales, and last year was awful."

Metzelaars said the student union was able to balance the losses without increasing student fees last year because its previous contract with Barnes & Noble stipulated that it would receive $3 million minimum regardless of textbook sales. The newly renegotiated contract only guarantees a minimum of $1.5 million.

Metzelaars said she has not seen figures on the book center sales for this semester. Mike Gore, the store's manager, said he could not release the data because Barnes & Noble College Booksellers Inc. is a publicly traded company.

But Gore admitted there has been little good news for so-called "brick and mortar" nationwide textbook stores, adding the university followed this trend.

"The students are going online — there's no question about that," he said.

Jim Osteen, assistant vice president for student affairs who oversees the bookstore, said textbook sales once subsidized other Student Union functions. Now, that's no longer possible. The student union faces a $1.4 million budget shortfall. Officials plan to raise money through booking more events and eliminating positions in addition to increasing student fees.

The timing of the book center's new contract with Barnes & Noble especially hurt the Student Union's finances, Metzelaars said. As the book store's sales slipped during the negotiations, the university lost leverage, she said.

"If it had been a year earlier, it would have made a difference of $300,000 or $400,000, maybe more," Metzelaars said.

Metzelaars also acknowledged that students' ability to shop around has ironically led to the need for increased fees, a point that's significant for the state legislature.

The General Assembly engaged in a heated debate last year about whether a law requiring all of the state's public institutions to publish textbooks' ISBN information would lead to a need for higher student fees.

The law passed, and Metzelaars said it has not had too much of an effect at this university because it was already releasing the information. Still, the university's new fees could provide an early indication of how the law will affect other institutions around the state.

However, P.J. Hogan, the University System of Maryland's lobbyist, maintained that it was too early to gauge the bill's effect.

"I think it's way too soon to know the full impact," he said. "The law just went into place in July. ... Nobody knows yet what the full impact will be."

slivnick at umdbk dot com

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Erik

Mon Oct 12 2009 17:39

It's not just online outlets that are hurting the UBC. I shopped only at the UBC for over a year, mostly because it was convenient. Then when preparing for a course that required 4 textbooks, a classmate told me about bookholders. I priced the books at UBC and bookholders and found the difference to be just over $85. Ever since then I have not even considered UBC for textbooks. I wonder how much money I wasted because I didn't feel like walking across rt. 1. I wont make that mistake again.
So, I guess if dining services, parking meters, athletic ticket sales and fundraising efforts don't make as much as previous years, we the students will get charged with more useless fees.

Your name

Mon Oct 12 2009 12:40

@ not my name - No no no, they'll just apply for a federal bailout at that point. Too big to fail and all that. God forbid they adapt to a changing marketplace or lower prices to match that of their competitors. And why should they, if they can just be subsidized by forced student "fees" instead?

not my name

Mon Oct 12 2009 12:31

One day, I expect most textbooks wont be in a traditional book format but will be distributed through online means as e-books. It will likely be awhile before that happens, but I have confidence that it WILL happen eventually. There would then be no point for the University Book Center other than the sell overpriced merchandise no one wants. I guess the University response to that will be to charge even higher fees to recoup the "lost" revenue. I have a feeling the University is going to look a LOT different 5 years from now than it does today.

Your name

Mon Oct 12 2009 11:55

@ dbk facts wrong (again) "The student union fee is increasing about 7% next year (not 12) and less than a third of the $1.4M shortfall from the new B&N contract is being asked for in FY11 fees. The union could make difficult cuts instead of asking for a fee increase but that will only hurt the existing student programs. The Student Union Advisory Board and Committee for the Review of Student Fees passed these increases unanimously. Stop complaining about $16 bucks when UG fees increased $165 thanks primarily to a new $100 library fee."

I won't argue with you that the Diamondback seems to just make up half of its reporting out of thin air. But I do disagree about whether or not we shoud be upset about this new fee. Just because the DBK is misleading (again), doesn't mean that it's dead wrong for the school to impose a new fee on students just because the school/bookstore/textbook industry has been extorting money from students for years and suddenly finds itself losing market share. Too bad for them.

To tell students to just grin and bear it because the fee is smaller than some others is just dumb.

dbk facts wrong (again)

Mon Oct 12 2009 09:19

The student union fee is increasing about 7% next year (not 12) and less than a third of the $1.4M shortfall from the new B&N contract is being asked for in FY11 fees. The union could make difficult cuts instead of asking for a fee increase but that will only hurt the existing student programs. The Student Union Advisory Board and Committee for the Review of Student Fees passed these increases unanimously. Stop complaining about $16 bucks when UG fees increased $165 thanks primarily to a new $100 library fee.

Cynthia

Sun Oct 11 2009 14:14

Blacks are the only ones who are allowed to send me emails. Emails from whites will be discarded.

Cynthia

Sun Oct 11 2009 14:13

My email address is cynthiaann2009@gmail.com. Lets chat.

Cynthia needs to go

Sun Oct 11 2009 10:50

Can someone at the Diamondback just ban this idiot "Cynthia/Sister Mary Thomas/Donald/all the other stupid names she's using on every message board on here"?

She adds nothing to the conversation, she's a moron, she's a racist, and all she's doing is regurgitating all the leftist propaganda she hears from her professors, mixed with a dose of crazy.

Your name

Sat Oct 10 2009 00:27

dump the bookstore and lease the space to a better business which will be able to pay what the bookstore used to be able to pay before their poor business practices and the union's poor business sense led to the new deal

the union, just like other entities like DOTS, have no motivation to run things well since if they mess up they just pass the costs of their mistakes on to the students

how in the world does having a store that sells overpriced books and wildly overpriced clothing really serve students anyway?

Your name

Fri Oct 9 2009 19:31

How about we end the corruption within the Division of Student Affairs? All of these departments - DOTS, ResLife, Dining Services, Stamp, Health Center are part of this division. Strang they are all always having money problems. A little birdy told me that the higher ups like to pay for personal expenses using campus money. Maybe an audit is in order here?

Publius

Fri Oct 9 2009 15:51

Judging by the absence of critical readings skills evidenced in these comments, it seems a bookstore is needed more than ever! Stamp is NOT subsidizing the bookstore; it's still receiving a minimum of $1.5M from B&N annually. The bookstore was - and still is - subsidizing the student union. The fee increase isn't going to be given to the bookstore - it's going to go to the programming activities that the previous bookstore contract funded. Yes, B&N is going to be giving back less revenue to the union, but they're also making significantly less off of it. Slashing the activities Stamp funds is the only alternative; whether that programming is a prudent use of funds is another question entirely.

Your name

Fri Oct 9 2009 15:06

This is perfect. Textbook sales are declining so students have to pay higher fees. This is ridiculous.
And yet another example of how little the university respects its students.

Mike R

Fri Oct 9 2009 14:56

If they add more in fees, the demand for books will increase even further as cash strapped students turn to second-hand sources and illegal downloading (yes, people pirate textbooks) to meet the demands of their professors. If they stop charging $125 for a lousy eBook that I only have access for a year to, I might consider feeling sorry for their plight. They have the power to the negotiate with publishers, and it is their fault if they try to rip us off and end up getting burned.

terrapin

Fri Oct 9 2009 11:19

:( Subsidizing ShuttleUM=YES; it's good for the environment, reduces congestion, keeps kids off the streets late at night, etc. Subsidizing a private, profit-seeking Barnes and Nobles Bookstore!? This won't do much good to kill the stereotype that universities are a haven for socialist thinkers...

Your name

Fri Oct 9 2009 09:32

Typical - the school has been running a virtual monopoly for years now, all but forcing students to buy from them while overcharging. Now students have found other options, so what's the school's response? No, not to lower prices to compete in the marketplace. Let's just force students to pay more in "fees!" Hey, we don't even have to give them a book now, we'll just take the money from them!

Finally, a cause that I would wholeheartedly support student action against. This is just tyranny on a small-scale, but ultimately no different than the government deciding to raise taxes when revenue drops. It's just a lazy, knee-jerk reaction that only screws students, and does nothing to address the larger issue.

Students should be up in arms.

Terp

Fri Oct 9 2009 09:08

Attention student leaders:
You're about to pay even MORE for something that supply-and-demand is clearly showing people want less of now. THIS is something to protest about.

Your name

Fri Oct 9 2009 08:53

The University Book Center is convenient, but not much else. Unfortunately, their prices are much higher than their competition- even other brick and mortar stores. Customer service sucks. Textbook pick up lines are long. Two out of the 3 times that I've ordered books, there's been a mistake in my order. Mistakes like charging a $400 textbook order to my credit card twice, and taking days to fix the mistake.

So there's a lot of reasons I don't shop there. ISBNs alone aren't a scapegoat for the failings of the UBC.

Ryan

Fri Oct 9 2009 08:49

It the UBC charged a more reasonable rate for used books (less than the current 75% of the new price regardless of condition), they would be able to compete better with online sellers and Bookholders.

Your name