Wal-Mart.com Adds Textbooks
by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 8/20/2001
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, has set up a college bookstore on its Web site, promising more than 300,000 textbooks for sale with an average discount of 20%. Books-A-Million, Wal-Mart. com's book wholesaler, is drop-shipping the textbook orders directly to customers. However, many of the textbooks on the Wal-Mart site are listed as out of stock.
Wal-Mart spokesperson Cynthia Lin told PW that though Wal-Mart stores do not carry textbooks, Web site customers began requesting them almost as soon as the site began selling books; the textbooks were added this past July. She said, "The response has been excellent," and noted that "educational books in general sell very well and are among the bestsellers on our site from test prep guides to Norton anthologies." To illustrate this, she pointed out that one of Wal-Mart.com's top-selling items has been Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Volume 1 (McGraw-Hill, $125), which is discounted 30% to $87.50.
The company is planning to try to leverage its advantage of having bricks-and-mortar stores in each of the 50 states, making it easy to return unwanted books to Wal-Mart stores.
The average college student spends $501 on textbooks each year, according to the National Association of College Stores. In a race to reach this market in the late '90s, vast sums were poured into the creation of online textbook stores, such as the now-defunct BigWords.com and the half dozen remaining online textbook retailers, such as efollett.com, varsitybooks.com and B&N's textbooks.com. Still, the majority of students purchase textbooks at the campus bookstores. Just 7% of students have bought a textbook online.
