1. Tell me a little about Neebo.

Neebo Connect is formerly Specialty Books, which has been in operation since 1988-- our parent company is Nebraska Book Company out of Lincoln, Nebraska. Basically, what we do is partner with colleges to fulfill textbooks and course materials for their students at no cost to the schools. They set their own profit margins and we provide a commission off of everything sold. We take care of the students and build them a website based off of the school’s website, as well as fill the textbooks and provide everything the student needs right out of our warehouse.

2. What are some of the benefits of using Neebo Connect as opposed to some of the more traditional bookstore models?

A lot of the other services are at a cost to the institution. With us, there’s no cost to the school-- we do everything ourselves. It’s a great way to take some of the hassle out of fulfilling for students. Schools don’t have to have a warehouse or attend to the customer service side of it; we take care of all of that for them for free.

3. What type of commission options does a school have?

We do a commission-based service, generally off of a per-publisher basis. For example, with some of the major publishers like Cengage, a school may decide to mark up three percent of every Cengage book. From there, the school receives a percentage of that as commission quarterly.

4. Of course, schools have varied supply needs—do you supply textbooks for entire departments, or can that supply be broken for specific classes?

That is entirely up to the school. For example, there are medical colleges that use us because they don’t want the hassle of having to warehouse all of their medical books. Or, some schools simply utilize us for their online programs. Some schools choose to have their ground campuses, their brick-and-mortar stores, but only utilize our services for everybody who’s an online student-- we do the fulfillment for all of the online courses. We can either help with strictly online course materials, or we can do a brick-and-mortar store. We also have gone on-site for a week or two at a time to do a pop up store for students to have access to the materials during high-demand times of the year, such as the beginning of school or at buy-back time.

5. Do you offer varied formats for books?

We do both new and used books, as well as rentals and ebooks.

6. Clearly Neebo can help with book inventory; do you provide any other materials?

Yes. If your school is a medical college, we can fill scrubs for students, and have things like scrubs and stethoscopes in stock. For culinary schools, we can provide culinary and knife kits. Any materials that schools want their students to have for a particular course, or simply to have on hand for their students, we can provide.

7. It seems like so much of what you do is tailored to the institution itself. What sort of solutions do you most often offer?

The formatting is completely up to the school. If they want a really fancy website, where the student’s schedule is loaded into the site and the website will immediately direct them to their books so that they don’t have to search for it— that’s a customization we can do. We can also do a bare bones website, with department course sections so the student can locate and buy the book themselves.  

8. Where is Neebo now?

Neebo houses millions of textbooks that reach millions of students across the nation. We also own over 280 campus bookstores nationwide, and are continuing to expand.

For more information on Neebo, please visit http://www.neebo.com.