Comments on: Book-Selling Business Wastes Energy through Antiquated Business Practice

By: April L. Hamilton

April L. Hamilton — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:15:54 +0000

Based on the most recent Random House/Zogby poll, I think the whole issue of returns is rapidly becoming irrelevant because chain bookstores are increasingly irrelevant to any given author’s sales. The poll shows that in the past year, 68% of respondents made the majority of their book purchases from vendors *other* than big chain bookstores. 43% responded that they bought most of their books online. Combine an online-only retail delivery system with POD production methods, and all the waste and illogic of the current returns system, along with all the author careers it’s killing, become a thing of the past. I publish my trade paperbacks via POD exclusively, so none of my books even get printed until a customer has ordered and paid for each copy. No remainders, no returns, no yo-yo ordering and redundant shipping expense and greenhouse emissions. I blogged about the poll here (including a link back to the poll results on Zogby’s site), in a post entitled Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch:
http://aprillhamilton.blogspot.com/

By: Eric Hammond

Eric Hammond — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:14:21 +0000

You appear to be blaming the stores largely for this foolish way of doing things. I grew up in the bookstore industry and know that, in truth, the publishers designed it in an effort to get bookstores to put a larger variety of their titles on the shelves. It worked, too. The problem is the reader/buyer is a fickle critter, and it is impossible to predict what a person will or will not buy. The returnable books policy gives the store the insurance policy to gamble on carrying the title. Now if you take that away, the stores, which are struggling to stay afloat as is in an Internet world and with a low profit margin, will buy fewer books and fewer risky or esoteric ones – boring shelves will be the result, where stores will carry only the next sure thing. Of course, the next sure thing will sell even better at the discount houses and on the web. See the pattern.
The solution? Perhaps giving the stores a better profit margin on non-returnable higher-risk packages [variety] would give stores the incentive to buy them, promote them, and sell the duds at a discount. No more books being shipped back and forth. But are the publishers willing to give up some of their profit margin to make it work? And would it be enough to help save the dying bookstore industry? Or would it simply make the Internet companies that much stronger?

By: Elizabeth Burton

Elizabeth Burton — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:26:58 +0000

“Small independent publishers like me don’t have the clout to start a movement to abolish returns in the book business.”

Excuse me, but if Franklin, Jefferson and Adams had believed that, you and I would be singing “God Save the Queen.”

Just so you know, that book you’ll get back from LSI won’t be the one the bookseller returned. They’ll trash that and print you a new copy. So, you won’t have to worry whether it will be fit for sale, it will. On the other hand, the original book has not only added yet more to the carbon footprint but the resources used to create it will have been wasted.

Are we really SO desperate to receive the grudging acceptance of booksellers that we aren’t willing to band together and say “not on your life?” It’s one thing to agree to accept returns on a small, individual order if it means the difference between an author being able to hold a signing or not, but I do not and will not contribute to the appalling waste that is returns.

And anyone who agrees with me is welcome to contact me at zumayabooks(at)gmail.com to discuss how we small publishers CAN start a movement.

As Franklin said back when the colonists were giving Parliament the kiss-off, “If we do not hang together, then we shall surely hang separately.” Returns are an abomination, both environmentally and with regard to the economic impact they have on inventory-free publishers whose COGS is higher than that of traditional, offset-using publishers.

Booksellers aren’t required to order ten copies of a book when two would do. They’ve just gotten so addicted to being able to do it and ship the excess back for credit they can then apply to their next order they’ve come to accept it as a reasonable way to finance stocking. I’m not prepared to subsidize their business at the expense of mine, and most particularly at the expense of the authors who trust me to see they are fairly compensated for their hard work.