U. students weigh in on Labyrinth

Labyrinth is now the only major bookseller in town after the University decided to restructure the U-Store, shutting its book business and buying out the independent Micawber Books to make room for the Princeton paraphernalia store.

The University’s unique academic calendar and students’ preference for early textbook purchases has resulted in a few issues for the bookstore, co-owner Dorothea von Moltke said.

Intersession allows students to better anticipate their textbook needs, von Moltke said, adding that the store did not expect students to buy their books before the semester had even started and as a resulted suffered long wait times and short staffing.

“The lines were longer than they would have been had we known [about the early shopping],” von Moltke explained, adding that if Labyrinth had been aware of students’ eagerness to shop early, more employees would have been available to help retrieve books and accept payment on some of the busiest days.

Labyrinth is already planning changes to make future semesters run more smoothly. The store plans to link directly to the Blackboard site to let students know when their textbooks arrive. Additionally, the store plans to meet with its faculty, student and administrative advisory committees to discuss improvements.

“We hope to hear any concerns that students have [and] explain where we can’t meet those demands ... so it’s clear the ambition is shared of making the books as easily accessible as possible,” von Moltke said.

“I would say the focus was on getting open,” he said, “and between now and the fall semester the focus can be on how they can improve the process.” More plans for improvement are expected to surface after the March meeting with the student advisory committee, Breitman added.

Browsers and go-getters

Student and faculty reaction to Labyrinth’s textbook business have been mixed, with criticism stemming mainly from the store’s decision to keep many textbooks behind the counter instead of on browsable shelves. “Any time there’s a change, sometimes there’s resistance ... and there are questions about how things are done,” Breitman said.

Many students, however, have expressed their preference to search for textbooks in open stacks as they did at the U-Store.

“Sometimes when I’m shopping for courses I might want to look at the textbook to see what the course is like,” said Megan Chiao ’09, who is still finalizing her class schedule. Exploring a class’ readings is much less convenient at Labyrinth, she explained, where it may be awkward or inconsiderate to other customers to ask employees to retrieve a book that ultimately might not be purchased.

While Labyrinth stores in general have a policy of training staff to help students obtain their books, the Princeton branch is making changes to accommodate the “nostalgia for the open-stacks approach,” von Moltke said.

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“Running course books for students is one of the great tasks of this bookstore,” she noted. “This model of serving directly is one that has worked extremely well for us at Yale and Columbia. ... We can find the books quickly, and we can provide the student with accurate, up-to-date information on anything that’s not on the shelf.”

Students, however, are welcome to come behind the counter and look for their books on their own, she said. “We are nothing if not proponents of browsing.”

Von Moltke added that the unfinished state of the store’s basement, in which textbooks are currently crammed into a small section, is not the result of poor planning or a desire to keep students away from their books. Labyrinth only received final permits from the town zoning board in January, she said, adding that this delayed the completion of the bottom floor’s final layout.

Prowling the financial labyrinth

Von Moltke expressed concern that students will unfairly use an open-stack system to record information that will turn Labyrinth into a “resource into easier online shopping for somebody else.”

“My experience is that the number of students who want to browse in order to see what else is taught or to get an impression of the class is very small compared to the number of students who want to comparison shop,” she said.

These concerns notwithstanding, Labyrinth has created binders containing information such as ISBN numbers, publishers and edition numbers that are available for students to peruse, von Moltke said. Students can then take this information and make purchases online.

For some students, the potential profits of comparison shopping are worth the requisite time and inconvenience. Chiao, for example, noted that one of her classmates obtained a new textbook, priced by Labyrinth at $120, from an amazon.com seller for half that price.

Jennifer Oswald ’11 had a professor who actively encouraged online shopping.

“[He] didn’t order [textbooks] through Labyrinth because he thought that we could get them cheaper online,” Oswald explained.

But the fact is, von Moltke said, that independent booksellers simply cannot afford to compete with internet giants like Amazon.

“There is a reason why the U-Store isn’t doing course books anymore. It’s not something that you can economically sustain,” von Moltke said, adding that textbooks have a much smaller profit margin than non-course books, which themselves do not gross large margins. Companies like Amazon compensate for this with other merchandise, but booksellers don’t have this option, she explained.

This is a hard reality for Princeton students who are accustomed to the U-Store’s textbook policies. For students who paid $25 and became members, the U-Store would match the price of any textbook sold by a major bookseller, including Amazon. In addition, members received 5 percent off textbooks and 10 percent off all other books.

At Labyrinth, students can obtain a free membership card that guarantees a 10 percent discount on all the store’s non-textbooks, including sale items. Once a student spends $300 or more on textbooks, this discount goes up to 20 percent but still excludes course books. This membership program is a “direct result” of U-Store policies to which students were accustomed, von Moltke said.

“What we can do is make everything else in our store be competitive with Amazon prices and then some,” von Moltke said. “We’ll match Amazon prices on everything else in our store and then some in hopes that it will seduce some of those students to spend time in the store and spend time on books.”

But many students remain skeptical of the perks of a Labyrinth membership.

Chiao, for example, had no plans to buy books aside from those used in her courses. For her, “it’s not going to be worth it,” she said.

Oswald, though, decided to become a Labyrinth member. She has already utilized the benefits because the discounted book she purchased was one that she needed for a class but was available in the store’s non-textbook section.

“[The Labyrinth card] is interesting in that it encourages students to explore other types of books, but I feel like it’s not going to be useful for most students,” she noted. “It’s sort of just an added perk, but it doesn’t count for much.”

“Labyrinth Books is not intended to be the sole source [for textbooks],” Breitman noted. “People are free to buy their books wherever they want,” he explained, adding that it is Labyrinth’s responsibility to offer competitive prices to students. “If price is the motivating issue, then Labyrinth might not be the place to buy all your books,” he said.

Breitman pointed out, however, that students should take advantage of other aspects of the store’s inventory. “They’re not able to provide discount on [text]books,” he said, “but their trade books are significantly discounted.”

Giving back, exchanging goods

Labyrinth’s return policy is less lenient than the one the U-Store offered. While the U-Store gave full refunds for textbooks until after the University’s official add/drop period was over, Labyrinth will stop issuing full refunds after today, two days before the Feb. 15 deadline for free course add/drop. Instead, students can receive store credit for returned books.

Von Moltke explained that the deadline was chosen with the add/drop period in mind. “By that time, students will know what they’re taking,” she said. “Beyond that, what happens is you get used as a library. We can’t be that as well as a bookstore.”

Chiao noted that the shorter cash refund period affected her decision to purchase books as she shopped for classes. “If I had a course I wasn’t sure I was going to keep, I wouldn’t buy the book. There’s less flexibility,” she said.

“It makes sense to me that they should keep the return policy open until past the add/drop period,” French professor Goran Blix noted. “If they end on Wednesday, that seems to be cutting it a bit short.”

Prof-etic Praise

Many professors, though, appreciate the ease and efficiency of Labyrinth’s system, which allows professors to submit book orders online. English professor Jeff Dolven has not had any problems or complaints thus far. “It seems to have gone entirely smoothly, and for that any professor is profoundly grateful,” he said.

Blix said that he used to have to go to the foreign language center, housed in the U-Store, to submit textbook orders in person. “I was always pretty pleased with how things went in [the U-Store],” he said.

Labyrinth’s system is more efficient than the foreign language center’s, he said, but not as transparent and amenable to special orders, since all orders are submitted online.

“I was happy that it was so easy to order,” Blix explained. “I thought it was a real asset. On the other hand, I did have to type in all the ISBN numbers, and for some foreign language books this was apparently not enough to identify them.” The result was confusion in the form of an e-mail sent to students two weeks prior to the start of classes indicating that several books would not be ready on time.

Looking beyond textbooks

According to some faculty, Labyrinth’s general selection of both academic and popular books is just as important as its textbook inventory.

Dolven noted that he and other faculty members are “ecstatic” about Labyrinth as “a place where all kinds of readers can go and find something that’s from the 16th century [as well as] something that’s very much from the 21st.” That possibility of discovery, he added, was missing from the U-Store. “The real difference for me is the sense that Labyrinth is a dedicated bookstore, not just a warehouse for textbooks.”

Before coming to Princeton, Blix had taught French at Columbia, formerly the site of another Labyrinth bookstore.

“I thought something like that was really missing at Princeton,” Blix noted. “Much as Micawber had its charms and attractive setting, it really was not well stocked in academic books of the sort that would cater to the Princeton University community.”

As part of its mission to serve its mixed constituency, Labyrinth plans to host book signings, discussions and other events, starting this March.

“We’ll be very proactive in the outreach to make the store really become part of the fabric of the town, area and the University in equal measure,” von Moltke said.