This Chicago son and Generation X entrepreneur s love for books and technology began in high school when he spent most of his spare time in the stacks helping kids as a children s library assistant or using the WWW for classwork. Chrastka got his first taste of the academic marketplace working in the University of Illinois bookstore, and he honed his skills as manager and buyer for Logos, one of the Christian market s top 100 bookstores, where he used direct marketing and innovative customer relations to increase that store s market share and sales. Chrastka s inspiration for creating the online academic services hub came while working as the Midwest sales road representative for Westminster John Knox Press. He also won key national accounts in ABA and CBA markets, and single-handedly instigating the creation of a profitable Canadian distribution center for that publisher in less than 18 months. As far as Chrastka was concerned, his sales success came at too a high of a price.
Faculty have more responsibilities and less time.
Doing sales this way isn t time or cost effective, and really didn t serve my faculty market or my publisher. Chrastka, who had been raised on computers, and spent half his life sorting, selling, buying or marketing books, knew there was a better way. Every college and university is online. And so are all the institutions that support them, including libraries and research institutes. Creating an online sales site for publishers that offered faculty an easy way to survey and receive new books would save both faculty and publishers time and money.