Every semester, college students stood in long lines at the campus bookstore and paid full price for books they would use for four months. VarsityBooks.com wanted them to order from a laptop instead, at a discount. When it filed to go public at the start of 2000, online retail was the hottest story in business. A captive audience of wired students looked like an easy win.

Cheaper Books Before Class

The company bet that students would gladly order textbooks online if the price was lower and the books arrived before class. It promised discounts off list price and fast shipping. It spent heavily on campus marketing to build the brand. The deeper idea was about the campus bookstore, which convenience had protected for decades. Once ordering online became just as easy, that hold would break.

Running the Bookstores Instead

VarsityBooks priced at $10 a share in February 2000. Deep discounts proved hard to keep up. The company changed course and renamed itself Varsity Group. It began running online bookstores for schools instead of competing with them, and it built a modest business serving private high schools and colleges. In 2008 Follett, the big bookstore operator, bought the company for a fraction of its offering price.

Cover: Une Lecture, Pierre Paul Prud'hon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a reader with a book (study without the campus line).