Marketing in educational publishing: A case study of textbook sales between competing publishers

In March of 1999, the Ministry of Education for the province of Ontario published guidelines mandating curriculum changes for Ontario schools. The document stated that a new, mandatory course in career studies was to be taught to grade ten students. The establishment of the new course created a market for sales of a new textbook for the course. In Canada, in the sphere of educational publishing, Pearson Education Canada Inc. and Nelson Thomson Canada are close competitors. At the time of these curriculum changes, the companies were of equal size and stature in the Canadian educational publishing market. In the creation and production of a textbook for the new course, the companies worked within set parameters. The govenunent of Ontario set the framework for the textbook envisioned for the new course. These curriculum guidelines called for a "special" textbook; a book that dealt with concepts that were non-specific enough to accommodate the different goals, views, and aspirations of each student. The govenunent of Ontario designated an agency (the Ontario Curriculum Clearinghouse) to evaluate any textbook intended for the course. The time constraints set for the approval process and for ordering of textbooks were immutable. The competing companies had staff with expertise in responding to a govenunent's call for resources and in the preparation, production and marketing of a textbook. The textbooks produced by Pearson Education Canada Inc. and Nelson Thomson Canada were virtually indistinguishable. The approval agency gave similar endorsements to the book produced by each company. But Nelson Thomson Canada outsold Pearson Canada Inc. by four to one. This paper will argue that the reason for the difference in sales was that Nelson Thomson Canada was active in the market long in advance of Pearson, and that, all other factors being essentially even, especially in a market that had distinct time limits, this fact resulted in their conquest of the market for sales of a career studies text. Nelson Thomson Canada outsold Pearson Education Inc. by a margin of four to one because it started to market its textbook a full five months before Pearson determined to compete.