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No Profits as Yet

Salient: Salient has heard that the book centre is not stocking certain textbooks, particularly Polls 111, a course being done by about one in eight students in the university. Why is this?

Chris Else: The problem with Pols. 111 is that the roll increased from 500 to 800 and this was something that no one predicted. So we had 300 students we didn't know were going to be there and we just didn't have the books for them.

How much warning were you given that extra copies would be needed?

We heard nothing officially from the department. We heard from the students about the increase. The problem at that stage was supply. We got as many as we could from local suppliers, which amounted to about 50. After that the only source of supply was America and they would take three months to get here.

Does this often happen, that you are given insufficient information by the department?

I wouldn't like to lay too much blame at the feet of the department. They don't really know until enrolment, and they get the figures through the computer, what the numbers are going to be like. And by that stage it's probably too late.

The Book Centre is planning to diversify its range. What fields are you moving in to

We're not so much diversifying as changing our policy on the type of books we buy. In the past a lot of money has been spent on big glossy books. I would like to introduce a range of paperbacks, the type that students would be more likely to buy.

At the moment 80% of your business is done in the first five weeks of term one. This means that the Book Centre is not much more than a textbook dispensary. If you brought in a wider range of books the students would get more use out of it. Why haven't you done this before?

I can't speak for my predecessor, but this is the first opportunity I've had, and I don't know how it will work out. I hope to introduce a range of fiction, and after the end of the first term we'll start looking at other areas as well — something like politics. . . but I don't really want to dabble in lots of bits and pieces. I think it's better to build up a reputation...

If we say we stock science fiction and we have just three or four titles and a few cookery books, then no one will get much of what they really want. At the moment it is just a textbook dispensary, although we have got a lot more titles in terms of fiction than we've had before. But here of course space is a problem.

The Book Centre is 100% student owned. What is the actual advantage for students when they can sometimes get books cheaper from places like Whitcoulls —they give a discount too.

The question of discount is decided by the Booksellers' Association and as we belong to that we are bound by its policy, and Whitcoulls and any other shop that sells University textbooks will give a discount.

In terms of it being cheaper, the main reason is one of how much old stock is left. If there are books left at the end of the year they will be sold the following year for the old prices. But if there is nothing left at the end of the year and the book is to be used again all new stock will carry the hew price.

Profits aren't going directly back to students. Where are they going?

At the moment there are no "profits". It's a question of establishing the business. We made a small profit last year, and hope to this year, but there are things that need to be done here like paying off loans. So for the next few years there won't be an enormous inflow of money into the students' association from the Book Centre.

What will happen to the profits when you have established the business?

The profits will go to the Trust Board which is organised as part of the students' association and it will be a Trust decision what happens to the profits.

Surely the most direct way for the students to benefit from a student owned Book Centre would be to have cheaper books?

Yes. . . but the only way that could be done would be to become involved in a political battle with the publishers and the Booksellers' Association. This could have serious implications — certain publishers might refuse to supply us for going against current trade practice. If this happens our service could well be worse instead of better.

So what do you see the Book Centre as at the moment?

Right at the moment we are trying to move our old stock at reduced prices. I'm hoping to try and get more students in here, not just looking for textbooks but for other things as well. That's one of our problems — not that we don't have the books — but that the students don't come in here, because it's not very convenient. It would be better if we were up in the Union Building.

How do you see the Book Centre competing with a place like Whitcoulls?

The competition's a bad thing because it means we have no precise way of estimating just how many books to order. Whitcoulls doesn't have a policy of stocking books for every course, as we do. They may order 50 or 100 or none for a course, according to whim, and we don't know what they do. So we have no way of getting our order to the level where we can provide the service we want.

You'd have the advantage of direct liaison with the departments.

Yes, but even if we know that here is a course where 300 books will be sold, that that doesn't mean that We will sell 300 books. So if we order 300 books and only sell half of them, we could be left with a pile of dead textbooks on our hands at the end of the year. You have to be very careful about the number of books you order.

The problem appears to be a lack of information. Can you do anything about this?

We can do something about the problem of communication. One of the things I want to do this year is go and talk to the lecturers about the problems and attitudes to books — what books they will be using frequently, and what ones they'll just be referring to — as these affect how much will be bought. If we can get this kind of information that will make ordering much easier.