Last Wednesday, members of the Save the Bookstore Coalition gathered on the Main Green to oppose outsourcing the Brown Bookstore to an external vendor like Barnes and Noble College Booksellers. During the course of the protest, coalition members delivered a petition including the signatures of 1,201 community members in support of their cause.
Since the mid-1990s, Barnes and Noble has won several contracts to operate bookstores at other Ivy League schools. The Harvard Cooperative Society announced in 1995 that Barnes and Noble would manage the Coop's store operations. Administrators at Yale University selected Barnes and Noble to take over the Yale Co-op in 1997. Barnes and Noble also won a contract to operate a new bookstore at Columbia University in 1997.
As coalition members continue to advocate maintaining the Brown Bookstore's current independent model, they argue that outsourcing the bookstore to Barnes and Noble could lead to higher prices and a depleted selection. But University administrators, including Brendan McNally, special assistant to the executive vice president for planning, maintain they would be able to ensure comparable prices and selection when drafting the University's initial contract with Barnes and Noble.
Pricing concernsPeter Sprake '07, an employee of the Brown Bookstore and member of the Save the Bookstore Coalition, said he believes the Brown Bookstore offers more competitive prices than bookstores operated by Barnes and Noble.
"No matter what, we never price books above the recommended list price, because it's part of Brown's mission to save students' money on textbooks," said Sprake, who originally enrolled in 1966, left Brown before graduating and re-enrolled in 2001. "Barnes and Noble will try to recover extra money by bumping the price up."
It's unclear whether Sprake's claims are supported by actual price comparisons.
A new copy of "Principles of Economics," a common introductory textbook by N. Gregory Mankiw, is sold for $151.50 at the Harvard Coop, while used copies cost $114. The Brown Bookstore charges $141.35 for a new copy and $84.75 for a used copy.
At Columbia and Yale, "Organic Chemistry," a textbook by Peter Vollhardt and Neil Schore, was not available but could be purchased for $133.50 through the non-collegiate division of Barnes and Noble. The same book costs $153.35 at the Brown Bookstore. But an employee from Yale's bookstore said the book might be priced differently if sold in Yale's bookstore.
In reaction to the concerns of Sprake and others, McNally said University administrators will focus on keeping book prices low when negotiating with Barnes and Noble, a concern he said may not have been emphasized at other schools.
"My understanding has been that when other universities have brought in Barnes and Noble in the past it was not one of their priorities to keep textbook prices low," McNally said. "Brown makes it a priority to make textbook pricing favorable to students, and that can be part of the contract. It might mean that the University receives a smaller profit from Barnes and Noble."
But Mark Palmore, executive director of Connect2One, which describes itself as "an alliance of independent college bookstores" that is "committed to keeping the independent college bookstores strong," expressed skepticism that the University could negotiate with Barnes and Noble to ensure low prices.
Palmore, who is also a member of the National Association of College Stores, said though the University could include a stipulation for lower prices in its original contract with Barnes and Noble, it would be difficult to guarantee a long-term commitment to keep textbooks at recommended list prices.
"Barnes and Noble frequently re-negotiates their contracts - which isn't always a bad thing," Palmore said. "But it is virtually impossible to turn back from outsourcing once it has been done due to the difficulty and cost of buying the entire inventory. The University would lose all its bargaining power to resist higher prices and in order to escape they would have to outsource to a different company."
Comparing selectionThe second concern frequently raised by Sprake and other members of the Save the Bookstore Coalition is that outsourcing would compromise the quality and breadth of academic books available to the Brown community.
"Whenever Barnes and Noble takes over a university bookstore, independent bookstores nearby are forced to pick up the slack of what Barnes and Noble fails to supply," Sprake said.
Sprake said he believes the difference in the range of books offered by independent stores and those operated by Barnes and Noble stems from the fact that the Brown Bookstore is willing to purchase books at a very low discount or no discount at all. Additionally, the Brown Bookstore purchases imported books. Sprake said he believes Barnes and Noble, however, often declines to buy books at a low discount because such purchases generate smaller markup, thereby reducing a store's ability to profit from sale of these books.
According to Palmore, it is also possible that a bookstore operated by Barnes and Noble would stock fewer books published by faculty than the Brown Bookstore currently offers.
"Faculty books have a limited audience and there is a good chance they won't be extremely popular, but they are still very meaningful to the professors and students," Palmore said. "It is very important that a university bookstore makes a commitment to the faculty and not just making a profit for profit's sake."
But McNally said the quality of books offered should not suffer if the University ultimately decides to sign a contract with Barnes and Noble.
"We have found from primary discussion with vendors that they are more than willing to locate and purchase any book requested and that they would be able to work with the same buyers," McNally said.
Faculty frustration?Taylor Carman, an associate professor of philosophy at Barnard College, said he prefers to purchase textbooks from nearby Labyrinth Books rather than the Columbia University Bookstore operated by Barnes and Noble.
"Most professors don't do business with the Columbia bookstore because the selection is so bad. They don't have much in the way of an academic collection and scholarly material," he said.
Rachel Fulton, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago, said she has faced similar issues since the university chose to outsource its bookstore to Barnes and Noble in 1995, adding that most professors in humanities departments purchase their books from the local Seminary Co-op.
"I like the relationship I have with the Seminary Co-op much better, and it's a better academic bookstore so it's in my interest to support them," Fulton said. "The Barnes and Noble bookstore doesn't tend to stock the academic books that professors in the humanities department are looking for."
Fulton said she primarily hears complaints about UChicago's bookstore from humanities professors, adding that professors in the sciences don't typically experience the same difficulties with Barnes and Noble.
One bookstore advocate at Brown, Professor of English William Keach, formerly taught at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and witnessed the outsourcing of that school's bookstore to Follett Higher Education Group.
"My strong impression was that people felt that the attention paid to making a priority of the course and academic material shifted when the bookstore was outsourced," Keach said. "They seemed to have other priorities than serving the needs of the courses like they did when they were independent."
