By Resha Damania
Sales of traditional textbooks have dropped by more than a third as a result of the college’s eText initiative. But it’s not all bad news.
A summary of costs by Larry Cavanagh, book department supervisor of the Connections Store, shows that there has been an overall eight per cent decline in the sale of paper-based textbooks for the financial year of 2013 and a 31 per cent decline for the financial year of 2014. This compares to a 100 per cent of sales in the financial year 2012, compelling the store to get rid of five rows of textbooks.
As of this term, there are 80 programs that have adopted the use of eTextbooks, as opposed to 30 programs in the winter 2014 term.
“When you take textbooks out of 80 programs, the sales are bound to go down,” said Cavanagh.
“The withdrawal of some of the textbooks from the store not only reduced the sale of textbooks but also the sale of used books,” said Cavanagh.
The store has used the extra space available to amalgamate with the new technology store which was previously located in the Student Commons building. They also added a variety of new merchandise such as spirit clothing, campus clothing and various college-themed products.
“It’s really amazing how much freedom the eText initiative has given us,” said Cavanagh. “We now have the opportunity to try new things and sell so many more products.”
The store has also partnered with AC Hub to organize author readings and different themed events in hopes of promoting local authors.
The store plans to extend the eText initiative to all of the 180 programs offered by Algonquin by the end of year 2015, and also to continuing education programs and satellite campuses of Perth, Jazan and Pembroke.