You gotta hand it to SparkNotes, the nervy and boldly proliferating line of literature study guides created by four Harvard seniors and acquired by Barnes & Noble in March 2001. Variously described by the media as “cheeky new book notes,” “kind of a CliffsNotes wanna-be,” and “the last word in literary laziness,” SparkNotes have managed to swathe the dullish, déclassé category of study aids in something like sex appeal. Their Harry Potter notes got them front-page fanfare in the New York Times; their online message boards are full of desperate, advertiser-attracting students (seen on the Macbeth board: “I need a thesis!!!”); and they’ve even seduced schoolmarms — the SparkNotes team showed up at the National Council of Teachers of English show expecting to have tomatoes hurled at them, but teachers were just going gaga about what great learning aids they were. And all that media snickering? It’s been swell for business. “Two years after the acquisition,” says Robert Riger, SparkNotes’ Associate Publisher, “we’re profitable.”
There are now more than 1.5 million SparkNotes guides in print and at least 500,000 sold to date — sales no doubt aided by the fact that B&N kicked CliffsNotes out of its stores. The print side currently offers 200 titles in three product lines, but those lines are expanding rapidly. In addition to 11 new study guide titles in 2003, new offerings include SparkCharts — which are laminated review sheets in 48 subjects, ranging from two to six pages and selling for $4.95 — and 10 new course outlines, which will sell for $14.95 and compete with Schaum’s, the McGraw-Hill line. Also on tap is the No Fear Shakespeare series, which offers facing-page translations into modern English of the bard’s ten most frequently studied plays, going head-to-head with Barron’s. (There are no plans yet to boot any of these other competitors from B&N.) Previously, SparkNotes have only been available at B&N stores, but this June they will be distributed to all markets via B&N-owned Sterling. It is not clear how receptive competing bookstores will be to carry the titles; Riger concedes that “the real growth we expect will be in libraries and special markets.”
Where growth is concerned, however, SparkNotes has a secret weapon: its hugely trafficked website. “What’s unique about SparkNotes is that it’s a web company that survived the dot-com crash by reinventing itself as a print publisher,” says Editorial Director Justin Kestler. “The website, with all its traffic and growth, is driving the brand at retail.” The site has more than 5 million registered users and has been touted as “the world’s largest, most popular” educational website for high-school and college users, with 80 million hits per month and more than a 100% increase in page views this year. Next month the site will be relaunched to pump up advertising revenues (use of study guides and a variety of other features on the site is free, but you’ll be swatting away pop-up ads). You’re even encouraged to download and print the guides as PDF files — for $4.95 a pop, the same price as the book version. More than half a million registered users come from outside the US, and targeted sub-sites are now being built for parents, teachers, and librarians.
But the best example of print-web synergy at SparkNotes may be its venture into test prep materials, which will reach 23 titles this year, covering SAT and ACT subjects (graduate-level tests are expected in 2004). You can download “a fully searchable, hyperlinked version of the SparkNotes book we sell in Barnes & Noble stores,” and you also get five interactive practice tests with “instant diagnostic feedback,” a proprietary online performance analysis that SparkNotes regards as its main competitive advantage — besides price, that is. It’s all yours for $14.95, and once you buy access to one course, others are $9.95. By contrast, test prep giant Kaplan’s basic online SAT course costs $129.
Next stop: K-8 territory. “We want to become a very important school-to-home publisher for kindergarten to college that has both online and offline products that integrate,” says Daniel Weiss, Publisher and Managing Director of SparkNotes. “We’re looking at these markets very closely using the school-to-home model: the bridge between the education market and the trade market.” The company is now seeking partners in the educational market who have material suitable for licensing, and Weiss is also looking for writers with both curricula chops and trade skills. The juvenile line (which won’t be sold under the SparkNotes brand) is expected by early 2004. Beyond the kids’ stuff, the sky’s the limit. Weiss has even been dreaming about a stab at fiction publishing, leveraging his brainy Harvard grads to perhaps serialize chapters of novels on the Internet. “Our editors are highly credentialed literary types,” Weiss says. “Possibly we can use the reach of our website to figure out how to get new first novels published.”
