A Sales Pitch Named Desire
NOTE: Several of the on-line textbook sellers mentioned in this piece, originally published in 2000, have gone out of business
by Jay Vandergelt
I LOVE TENNESSEE Williams’s work. My favorite of his plays is “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The complex and manipulative Blanche DuBois and the equally as complex and brutishly stubborn StanleyKowalski face off. On a related topic (you’ll see how in a moment), I have been following the recent surge in online textbook sales with some interest, and have come to the conclusion that these textbook vendor dot.coms (bigwords.com, ecampus.com, varsitybooks.com, textbooks.com, efolletts.com, etc…) market to faculty the way Blanche DuBois lived her life. That is to say, these dot.com businesses pitch to faculty by relying on the kindness of strangers. “Do something nice for your students….” the ads all clamor. Pshaw.
Why, on earth, should any faculty member want to do something nice for their students just so Varsitybooks.com can sell more? The pitch is one of the most ridiculous marketing tactics aimed
at faculty I have ever seen. Faculty are, after all, Stanley Kowalskis at heart. Oh, stop rolling your eyes and admit it. Faculty are very interested in the Napoleanic Code of Life. The Math department owns a photocopier and you want to use it. The college owns several hundred computers, perhaps, and you want access to one. And don’t even get me started on the campus library. Faculty are takers, not givers.
And as far as our students are concerned? Dare I just blurt out that faculty can be uncaring S.O.B.s? Any why not? Do you care if your students attend class? Do you care if they complete their
homework? Do you care if they get good grades on their exams? Do you care if they turn in their assignments? Yes, of course you do, but only inasmuch as you care about your own job. It’s
inconvenient if students turn in assignments late; one likes to sit down with the entire stack of papers and grade them. If students don’t attend class, who’s going to answer the questions you pose
during the discussions? Students who get low grades often complain, if not to you then to the Department Chair.
So how many of you Saints out there have answered the dot.com textbook sellers’ call to “Do something nice for your students?” Some, I’m sure. There are Holy Relics in every department.
However, it’s not only silly but insulting to ask part-time and adjunct faculty, some of whom work very hard for just a few peanuts, to worry about saving their students a couple of bucks on their next Introduction to Literature anthology. I am waiting for the dot.com textbook sellers to get a clue about who teaches America’s undergraduates (without exception the dot.com marketing mavens are still living in the 70s, when full-time faculty taught freshmen).
The first company to get a clue will offer part-time, adjunct and full-time temporary faculty something more than platitudes for listing courses, and encouraging students to buy books online.
Until that happens, the dot.com bookselling Blanches are going to keep relying on the kindness of strangers. And we all know how that story ends, don’t we?
