Vastly misunderstood things in publishing

I’m all for spreading good information, because 1) it makes us all better people and 2) there’s a lot of seriously wrong misinformation out there and sometimes we need help sorting it all out from the people and situations and emotional responses that mix up that information. Now, keep in mind that information is a relative thing (like taste) so just because the following is true for me doesn’t mean it’s universally true.

Ready? Then let me start with a confession: last week I started a new job as a bookseller with my area Borders store. I’ve always loved Borders, from the days when the only store we’d visit would be in Indianapolis when we took our halfway point break on the road trip to visit family in South Bend. In that time I’d never been to a bigger bookstore than Borders and I never could spend enough time there.

Now things are more turbulent. Borders isn’t doing well (but neither is Barnes & Noble) and my goals aren’t those of a thirteen year old girl dazzled with all those shelves. But I have already learned a lot, and today I’m going to address two things I’ve already learned are very different on the author/reader publishing side and on the publisher/bookseller side.

Issue #1: African American interest books having their own section.

A lot of buzz on the reader/author side of things hates this. It’s been compared to segregation. People (rightfully) want authors and books to be treated fairly and offered to a wide audience, not sequestered away for only certain eyes.

The truth: Our AA readers would kill us if they had to hunt through the general fiction section area to find the latest books in the series/by the authors they like. My store is in a very central-urban area. Most days the number one genre I sell period is AA fiction. People come in looking for book three or four in a series–series which often aren’t numbered, or necessarily written to read consecutively–so it is much much easier on them to go to the AA section and find what they want.

We also maintain separate Manga, SF/F, Romance, Horror, Mystery & YA sections. This is how our customers like it. This helps them buy more and buy better which is good for everyone. Most of our customers come in while waiting for the bus or on their lunch hour or break, etc. They come back because our store is convenient for them. If things were difficult or more time consuming they couldn’t, literally, afford to come in and that would be bad for everyone.

So this comes down to meeting the customers needs (at least at our store/on our end). AA fiction is our biggest selling genre (though it’s close to romance) and because a lot of the books are trade not mass market it’s our biggest money maker too.

Issue #2: Big box bookstores don’t take small press books because they [are prejudiced/evil/don’t deal with the little guy/only out to make money/etc.]

I hate to be so negative about this one, but I’ve heard lots of these complaints made by people who have never seen the backside of a bookstore at all and they can get really angry (and insulting) about it. So yeah, there’s no good way to phrase this one.

The truth is it DOES come down to money, but not the way you think. First, bookstores need returns in order to stock the variety they do. Bookstores are constantly a test site. No one knows for sure what will hit big and what won’t, though we can make some educated guesses. The book business is massively hit or miss because it’s trying to profit off people’s tastes and those are so varying and chaotic it’s a barely contained mess. So a bookstore being able to return copies of books that missed means they are still around to try out book #2. If the bookstores (not just the big boxes, but all bookstores) fail so do the publishers. Neither can afford to front the whole loss, take the whole risk or can survive without the other. The returns system is broken, but who out there is coming up with something better?

Second, requiring that a press has distribution through Bowker or Ingrams or Baker & Taylor is not a snob move. Just yesterday the regional sales manager and I spoke about this and she pointed out that part of the problem is paying the publisher. See through a distributor the store just has to pay the distributor which then pays the publisher, who divvies it up for agents and authors. Getting small presses without distribution their money and product has become a large problem, and one that people like our manager don’t have time to deal with. Distribution makes it easier on the booksellers, giving them more time to run the store and serve the customers.

Issue #3 Returns

Uh, yeah this one is WAY misunderstood. Yes, bookstores overbuy (though you wouldn’t know that if you looked at our stock room. We have about 2-3 bookshelves of overstock. That’s it.) and publishers over print and then we all end up with more copies than we need. First, this isn’t as bad as running out of copies. Second, yeah it’s not a perfect system that allows the bookseller to send the books back.

But at my store we send the WHOLE book back. And you know what happens next? Eventually the publisher approaches Borders and says “Hey look, we have a bunch of these books left over. Will you buy them at a bargain rate?” And the bookstore says “Sure” and slaps low low prices on them and sets them up out front–and sells every single copy they bought no returning these copies. (No, really, I sold 4 Permuted Press titles for ninety eight cents last week. And right now we have a big mess of bargains from Random House the ring up as “Random House bargains”.) We sell them ALL. No stripping, no sending back just the covers. No dumping paint on them to prevent them from being used.

I’m not saying these things don’t happen, I’m just saying they’re not universal procedures.

That’s all for this installment. I hope you’ve all learned something, because I know I’ve learned a lot in my short time on the other side of things.