Print
Solutions January 2006
Producing
Tangible Technology
When
college stores gear up for the
early-semester book rush, stocking
cramped shelves with new and used
texts, 50 U.S. campus shops will
display catchy blue and neon-orange
gift cards. If the cards have
no hardcover and no pages highlighted
by a past owner, are they books?
“Yes,
it’s a textbook,”
say the shelf danglers that promote
the “e-books.” To
sell digital books, which generally
cost 30 percent less than brand-new
editions, students need to see
the value to believe it, explains
Jeff Cohen, advertising and promotions
manager for MBS Textbook Exchange
in Columbia, Mo.
“We
wanted to tell students that this
is just as much a textbook as
the book next to it on the shelf.
You just use it differently,”
says Cohen, noting that MBS is
a sister of Barnes & Noble
and the largest bookstore buyer
in the wholesale industry.
Together
with St. Louis, Mo.-based Jerome
Group, MBS created a tangible
token for an online product. A
sturdy laminated card represents
the 500 digital textbook titles
MBS distributes to college bookstores,
and students purchase them at
the cashier the same way they
buy print materials. MBS developed
this innovation in response to
industry trends and buyer demand,
Cohen says.
“The
textbook industry today is under
fire,” Cohen remarks, citing
the availability of campus broadband
connections and concern about
textbook prices for the growing
interest in e-books. Textbook
prices have climbed an average
6 percent each year since 1986;
this is more than twice the rate
of inflation, according to the
Government Accountability Office.
“It
only makes sense to start driving
print material to electronic means,”
Cohen says.
A
couple of years ago, publishers
began selling textbooks online,
bypassing bookstores. MBS saw
an opportunity to reconnect its
customers to publishers while
still offering students the lower-cost
benefit of buying digital books.
By collecting texts from publishers,
MBS could convert print material
into digital format to distribute
to bookstores.
The
catch: to give digital media physical
appeal so students would purchase
the online material the same way
they would buy any old book.
“Many
students buy books with financial
aid,” Cohen explains. “They
don’t have an option to
go to a publisher’s Web
site to buy a textbook because
they need to make the purchase
in a college bookstore to use
their financial aid.”
Also,
by presenting students with a
physical token that they purchased
a digital book, students would
feel they were purchasing an item
of value—a gift-card, essentially.
“The unique part is that
students are buying digital content
from a physical shelf,”
Cohen emphasizes.
Of
course, before MBS could entice
students with its digital product,
it needed a sturdy, secure card—one
with more shelf appeal than competing
inventory (new and used books).
MBS approached Jerome Group with
a list of features the cards needed,
including five variable codes;
heavy stock; sharp design; and
most of all, printing efficiency
and accuracy to ensure as little
spoilage as possible.
“We
wanted the product to have no
value in the store until it was
physically sold at registers,”
Cohen describes. “That way,
if someone picked it up and put
it in their pocket, it wouldn’t
matter.”
Building
in security measures required
special attention to the printing
method, says Matt Biffignani,
partner, Jerome Group. Variable
data on each card includes an
activation code hidden under a
scratch-off surface, a bar code,
and a batch code to identify text
and store location.
“There
are many ways we can print products,
especially in the digital print
environment,” Biffignani
explains. “We can print
shells and drop in the variable
data on the fly; we can print
directly in color with variable
data on the fly. We had to make
sure from a quality control standpoint
that the right cards were with
the right batch going to the right
schools.”
Beyond
security measures, Jerome Group
knew that efficiency was critical.
Faced with a tight production
schedule, the printer ran a test
batch in April 2005 so MBS’s
IT department could test security
codes on each card before giving
the O.K. for the first major print
run.
“Our
staff was concerned about whether
they could print the barcode so
scanners could read them,”
Cohen says. “We knew once
we were in full production, there
was no room for mistakes. Having
checks and balances along the
way made sense.”
Biffignani
explained that in-house “checks”
verify the readability of all
barcodes. Still, printing a sample
of the digital textbook cards
would allow MBS time to double-
and triple-check the technology.
The distributor didn’t want
bookstores to find glitches while
activating students’ cards.
Also, students needed these activation
codes to download material. If
codes weren’t correct and
they couldn’t access the
text they purchased online, the
cards would be worthless.
“We
had to design the cards to get
the least amount of waste while
creating something that was unique,”
Biffignani says. “When everything
was said and done, the best way
do the test was to run [the cards]
all at one time with variable
data on the fly. Then we went
back and laminated it and applied
the silk-screen scratch-off material.”
This
method was most consistent, and
the first official batch of 15,000
cards contained only 89 cards
with missing numbers. Because
these defective cards were evenly
distributed among schools, Cohen
felt confident with the printing
method.
And
with a 2 to 5-percent sell-through
rate in the 10 bookstores that
offered MBS’s digital book
cards fall semester, Jerome Group
increased its print run for MBS
in January, when the distributor
added 40 more schools and beefed
up its textbook selection from
130 to 500 publications.
“The
publishing companies have found
more success with this program
than with selling the books themselves
on the Web,” Cohen says.
“They are actually getting
the digital books in front of
students.”
Cohen
can’t quote exact book sales
for fall semester 2005, but he
says more students are interested
in trying the product. “Price
is their biggest motivating factor,”
he says. “The question we
think many students are asking
is, ‘Do I know someone who
tried it, and do they like it?’”
Anyway,
digital books should complement
rather than replace printed text,
Cohen adds. “We see digital
textbooks as an alternative on
the shelf that may pick up 5 to
10 percent of the market share,
but they aren’t going to
change the way the printing industry
puts materials together,”
he says.
Jerome
Group’s ability to cater
to MBS’s high-tech demands
solidified an already strong client
relationship, Biffignani points
out. For MBS, giving bookstores
a digital product can prevent
them from losing sales from students
who shop through online bookstores.
The digital arrangement is solidifying
its relationship with publishers
and its wholesale distribution
customers—but it will not
change the way MBS does business,
at least for now.
“We
are in the early stages of seeing
where this product will go,”
Cohen says, noting that MBS is
the only wholesale distributor
that provides this option to college
bookstores today. “We’re
still waiting to see what the
competition will do, and they
are waiting to see if what we
do will work out.”
—Kristen
Hampshire
The
Making of an E-Book
Here’s
how MBS converts print text into
e-books for students:
Publishers
provide a digital version of the
print text, which MBS converts
into Adobe 7.0.
MBS
creates links from the table of
contents to each chapter.
Then
MBS sets the digital rights, which
is especially important because
these rights protect the text’s
intellectual property. Digital
rights control how the e-book
can be printed, shared and whether
it will include a read-out-loud
function.
MBS
provides participating bookstores
with a card, similar to a gift
card, which is associated to a
particular book. When the student
purchases the e-book, the card
is activated from the store’s
point-of-sale system and is available
for download over the internet.
Then, the student goes online
and enters a series of codes from
the card and is given the link
to download the e-book.
