Sales at the SFU Bookstore have dropped by between eight and ten per cent annually over the past two years from $13 million in 2012/13 to an estimated $10.6 million this academic year. Projections show further decline over the years to come.
The bookstore’s financial situation was under discussion at last month’s board of governor’s meeting. The board believes the decrease in profits is the result of a combination of things, including professors assigning less printed material and students finding alternative options to buying textbooks.
The numbers indicate that change is on the horizon for the SFU Bookstore. Pat Hibbits, vice-president of finance and administration, spoke to the idea of moving in the direction of more digital material, “You have to give more space to things other than textbooks [. . .] there isn’t an expanding need for [them].”
A survey of 450 SFU students last fall showed that more and more students are finding alternatives to shopping at the bookstore for course material which is having a direct impact on textbook sales.
Of the students surveyed, only 67 per cent bought a textbook, whether from the bookstore or some other source. The remaining 33 per cent used other means: some borrowed from a friend or a library, searched for the information online or in an unassigned book on the same topic, or even rented the book.
Those who buy textbooks are also finding other means of getting their books, with only 68 per cent of buyers going to the SFU Bookstore. The next most popular method of purchase is finding used books on social media like Books2go and Locazu.
Hibbits said, “We always thought that our big competition was Amazon, but in fact, that’s not that much of a competition. It’s actually students making other choices.”
Hibbits stressed the importance of the need for adaptability, “Some of the things we’re trying to do is to tap into the electronics market, whatever that looks like,” she said. Also, SFU Document Solutions is making efforts towards the BCcampus Open Textbook Project, which encourages institutions to pick up standardized texts that can be developed and made more accessible.
Despite the challenges faced by the bookstore, Hibbits assured that prices on textbooks will stay the same and that they are only trying to recover costs. A special task force of faculty and students is at work on the “textbook affordability conservation process” to make books more affordable for students. The gifts, clothing, and other books are where the margins are a little higher.
Although the VP believes that the sales drop will plateau at some point, she recognized that the market for textbooks is ever-shrinking and the traditional “old-way bookstore” is on its way out. She said, “Every bookstore in the country, I think, is facing the same kind of challenge.”
This challenge may give way to a different sort of store, “Perhaps, rather than thinking of it as the SFU Bookstore, you [should] think of it as the SFU store.”
