College bookstores trying to drive ebook sales through websites

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By Paul Biba

Trying to stay relevant to students, college bookstores are having to become innovative, as this article shows:

College bookstores are taking steps to turn their Web sites into e-book portals, hoping to stay relevant as publishers make a push to electronic textbooks.

A project announced this week by bookstore associations in the United States and Canada will bring a library of downloadable e-books to participating stores. A few stores in Canada are experimenting with the system this fall, and some U.S. stores will try the system starting this spring.

Trying to set up an e-book-distribution operation at each college store would be difficult and expensive. So the groups — the National Association of College Stores and the Canadian Campus Retail Associates Inc. — have pooled their resources to develop a shared system. Each store can integrate it into its own Web site, to let students buy and download an electronic text in just a few clicks, similar to the way Amazon and other online retailers do.

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