‘Arguing with Idiots’: If book chains want to save paper books from the Kindle, why are they so stupid about local needs?
Jobs might be lost if I’m not careful.
So I won’t even say which book chain it was—just that this little chat happened recently at a store in a liberal city in the D.C. area.
Employees were gracious and apologetic in saying why they probably couldn’t carry even a few copies of my Washington novel.
The trade paperback wasn’t on The List from the headquarters of their chain. Why? My very legitimate publisher had used print-on-demand-technology, and apparently I was up against the hoary old returns issue.
Praised by the same newspaper distributed in the store—but still shut out by the MBAs
Here’s the big kicker. The Washington City Paper had recommended my debut novel in March, even working in the holy names of Chandler and Hammett. Imagine: the same newspaper given away for free in the chain store.
Meanwhile a stand at the front was loaded with copies of books by Glenn Beck, the conservative broadcaster—this in a hugely Democratic city of Volvos and Obama bumper stickers!
Sorry to use a personal example in the TeleBlog for a second time today, but I can’t resist, given all it says about the lunacy of certain people in the book trade. Oh, to think of the thousands of good local writers whom the bookstore chains are dissing. I’m hardly the sole victim. Are chains outside the U.S. as obtuse as in the States? I’d love to hear from TeleRead community members in Canada, the EU countries, Australia, Japan and elsewhere.
Question for the MBAs
Along the way, will the MBAs in the book business take a little time out from their spreadsheets and please explain such flagrant disregard—not only of local customers and writers, but also of shareholders?
I love p-books, not just e-books, but the big chains are apparently doing their part to hasten their demise. Small wonder that Amazon is eating the chains’ lunch.
Physical bookstores can’t compete on price. But how about little details such as service and locally appropriate inventory? And hiring? Are the chains’ MBAs so dumb that they can’t find unemployed but savvy English majors to staff the stores and choose suitable titles?
Actually I suspect that many intelligent adults already work in the chain stores; why can’t top management let them do their jobs? I know that profits on items like book markers can be higher than on actual books. But still…
The phrase to use here?
Yes, I’m happy to see certain chains selling e-readers from Sony and other companies and trying to adjust to new technology in other ways, such as with online bookstores; but that’s no replacement for old-fashioned sanity in the executive suites.
I’d rather not be rude to possible sellers of my novel; and I know the world abounds with brilliant MBAs, too, not just morons. But in writing this post, I keep thinking of the title of Beck’s new book: Arguing with Idiots.
Print on demand: No panacea—and perhaps a major complication ahead
Maybe the efficiencies and capabilities of print on demand at local stores can eventually save the chains. But for how long? What happens when copying shops and coffee joints offer similar products and services?
Of course, the book chains might say, “But they don’t know books.”
Exactly. Then again, if the chains keep treating employees and customers like morons, just how credible will that response be in the end?
September 28th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
“Are the chains’ MBAs so dumb that they can’t find unemployed but savvy English majors to staff the stores and choose suitable titles?”
Unfortunately even savvy English majors are unlikely to have a book-reading horizon that extends back more than three or four years. Thanks to the Internet those of us who love older books no longer have to put up with the retailers’ attempts to push profitable new books at the expense of interesting old ones. The result is the same as what’s currently happening on broadcast television: an increasingly hysterical focus on mass-market sales to milk the increasingly smaller numbers of less-discriminating (i.e. Internet-illiterate) customers. Soon the average local bookstore will contain nothing but celebrity biographies and the latest blockbuster novels.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Hi David!
Regarding why your great novel has a hard time hitting bookstores – I’d guess the POD issue. At my local bookstore (part of a very large chain) is always hesitant to order books that POD, even when customers request them. Why?
As you said, a lot of issues with the stores being able to return books. A very large part of what bookstores order is based on the ability to return the book if it doesn’t sell.
But another reason is because this bookstore has had a horrible time just trying to get the books shipped from the POD company! Often, it will take weeks for a POD book to arrive at the store, if the order is even filled at all. That’s right, a large percentage of POD books ordered by the bookstore appear to be ignored by the printer!
All this leads bookstore employees to discourage customers from ordering POD books. They always point them to the POD website to order directly through the POD company.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate for POD books because it eliminates the waste of a large print run where a lot of the books might not sell. Unfortunately, large chain bookstores are very biased against anything that doesn’t come from one of the large publishing houses. Sad but true.
On a side note, my local store is in a fairly conservative area but they still stock a good mix of books on both sides of the political spectrum. However, they still have problems with customers turning all the books favorable to President Obama around so the back of the book is facing out. Petty and childish? Yes, very much so.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
David Rothman mentioned a stand at the front of a chain book store that was loaded with copies of a book. How was this book chosen? The publisher may have paid for the placement:
David Rothman did not mention Barnes & Noble specifically. The system of paid product placement is used at many stores.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
You can’t expect a bookshop to stock books that will be a dead loss for them if they turn out not to sell. A bookshop that does this will soon be stocking no books at all – because it will be dead.
Being unable to sell through bookshops was one of the things that you took into account when you decided to sign up with this publisher, but if things have changed and it has now become a problem for you then you can plug the gap yourself.
Buy 50 books from your publisher at a good discount, and sell them to the bookshops at a slightly less good discount on a sale-or-return basis. (Your contract probably won’t provide for much in the way of author discounts, but no publisher will refuse a reasonable deal if you wave money in their face).
Everyone benefits: the bookshop and the publisher, through increased turnover; and you, both from increased royalties and from the extra money you make by selling at a lower discount than the one you buy at.
What you are making money from is your superior knowledge of risk: the bookshop doesn’t know your book, the publisher doesn’t know your bookshop’s clientèle, but you know both.
September 28th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
This seems to be a common complaint. I followed Jonah Goldberg and the effort he had getting stores to stock his best seller “Liberal Fascism”. I saw much the same up here in Canada trying to buy another book that didn’t meet the political standards of the only major bookstore chain up here.
I think it goes to companies unwilling to stock and sell what their customers want. Add in companies playing dominance games with publishers and writers. Chains run out of head office are unable to know customers wants/needs in all geographical areas.
September 29th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
David,
Is your book available through Ingram or Baker & Taylor? If not, that could be a huge part of the problem. If a store orders from them, they have one invoice and one vendor to deal with. If they start ordering from this one, that one, and the other one, their costs go way up. Sad but true.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
David,
Is your book available from Ingram or Baker & Taylor? If not, that could be a huge part of the problem. Stores like to deal with as few invoices and vendors as possible.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Thanks to all the commenters here. A few points:
1) Scandals is available from Ingram and B&T. No need to deal directly with my legit publisher, Twilight Times Books.
2) I’m a writer with a blog to attend to, and I’d rather not worry about the biz details of buying my own book for resale. Not to mention the disruption to my cash flow.
3) I’d be happy with the store starting out with just a copy or two. We’re not talking about a huge investment. Besides, Scandals got recced by the Washington City Paper, the same one the store carries. Had some copies been on hand at the time of the rec, the store could have moved ‘em.
4) Great point about paid placement. But if people don’t buy Glenn Beck, what’s the point? Oh, how I hate PP! It’s no small reason why the chains are in such trouble.
Thanks,
David