 "Photo: Catlin Coughlin")
Amherst's battle over books has become an ugly one.
According to downtown bookstore owners, the rush to sell student textbooks is marked with deceit and business ethics that have corroded too greatly.
Ken Kahler, the director of the University of Massachusetts bookstore, was caught posing as a parent of a UMass student inquiring which textbook professor Suzanne Daly required for her class. In the e-mail, he said his daughter was enrolled in the class. He asked for the title, author and ISBN number of the text.
The e-mail was from a Kahler account not affiliated with the University, though he has one. Daly grew suspicious after replying to the message and asked Kahler's daughter's name. He did not reply.
Daly immediately informed Amherst Books co-owner Nat Herold via e-mail.
"I visited the Textbook Annex, and on the shelf was a card with my name and textbook on it, stating that the book was on order," she wrote in her correspondence. "When I demanded an explanation from the textbook manager, her assistant first told me that they had ordered the book in response to student requests."
She told the employee this was impossible since the students did not yet have that information.
"When I confronted him, he admitted that he did not have a daughter in my class and that he had deliberately deceived me in effect to steal our orders from the bookstores with whom we had placed them," Daly said.
Daly, a member of the English department, teaches a 300-person world literature class that requires students to buy "Concert of Voices," an anthology that retails at $44.95. At each semester's end, Daly polls her class asking at which store students prefer to shop. She said Amherst Books and Food for Thought Books are perennial front-runners.
In Amherst, textbooks are big business, and professors take the decision on who carries theirs very seriously.
Comparative Literature professor David Lenson's CompLit 131 class requires 150 students to purchase nine paperback books averaging $15 each. While Amherst Books is sent his list of books exclusively, students still have the opportunity to buy them used, on-line or from other stores.
But Herold said all is not fair in textbook sales - that an ugly version of competition has, over the years, morphed into border-line, industrial espionage.
In an e-mail to the professors who do business with him, Herold said the bookseller Follett has a long history of using devious and unscrupulous means to discover what professors have ordered at the three independent bookstores in town so that they can carry the course list and scoop sales.
Herold estimates that once the University's textbook annex acquires a course reading list, his sales for the books ordered drops around 70 percent.
Lenson's class alone generates roughly $20,250, and he was disturbed enough by Kahler's tactics to write to the University's vice chancellor of administration and finance, Joyce Hatch.
In his e-mail, he said the annex had created "mirror shelves" in the past, ones that mimic those at Amherst Books.
"I am asking that this shelf be dismantled, since it carries my name but does not originate with me," " Lenson said. "When a contractor acts in a manner contrary to the ethics of the academy, we have a responsibility to put a stop to it."
Mitch Gaslin, who runs Food for Thought Books, a non-profit, workers' collective, cited instances when individuals were paid to come into his store and copy book titles. He could not link these to employees of the University's bookstore but did note a truck driver complained to him that a University bookstore employee climbed into his truck to copy titles on boxes while he was inside.
"Professors make a conscious decision to support local business," Gaslin said. "To have [a representative] from Follet find their way into the middle of it messes it up."
According to University spokesman Patrick Callahan, Kahler was reprimanded by the vice president at Follett, the private firm that has the contract for the bookstore.
In a statement, Callahan said the director of Auxiliary Services at UMass, who oversees the contract with Follett Higher Education Group, has also sent messages of apology to 15 faculty members who were involved in these incidents. Both UMass officials and those from Follett have given assurances this will not happen again.
Follett has a section of its Web site devoted to values and ethics.
"From our policies and procedures to our corporate values and charitable contributions, it is our ethics and our sense of corporate responsibility that define Follett as an organization," the site reads.
William McGuinness can be reached at wmcguinn@gmail.com.
Be the first to comment on this article!