Bookstore Troubles
I stopped by and tried to sell a small press book to a very reputable bookstore
the other day. He’s the only real store in a very big, lonely region.
The owner told me that the niche we were speaking of doesn’t sell
very well for him thus he had no interest in adding to it.
(The niche is CYCLING, a distinguished niche in used bookstores
and on the internet! Sure it has an up and down track record,
but why not try to study WHY? I have. So have others, of course.)
Doesn’t his approach seem self-defeating, self-fulfilling?
Using his method, how can his shelf ever become vibrant, robust,
helpful and profitable again?
It mattered not to him that I’d been studying that niche for decades,
working with authors on it and know what it needs, know the classics,
know the scene involved beyond the bookstore, know the market.
He had no interest in what my aspect of the supply side had to say.
I agree with him that it’s dead. But not at all times and in all ways.
I say Let’s look this over and see what we can do to fix this!
When was it good and why? What titles move? What are considered
hot collectibles? Who’s a ripe author waiting in the wings?
Overlooked by the system like most good authors?
Now, he did say to get the title listed with a certain regional
60%-bite distributor and he MIGHT order it.
(Thus, moreover, here he is telling a longtime publisher who has driven out
of his way, is meeting him face-to-face, who is shopping, browsing and
studying his store, and who represents the root of
his supply side that he prefers to kill my margin and to
incur shipping and packaging costs and time. He refused
the handy stock staring right at him. He told me that its
size wouldn’t fit his shelf. I went and checked the shelf, it fit.)
In any event by saying he only worked thru a distro, he was
saying he only ordered books of the sort that were conducive
to being distro’ed—that is, the very lame shallow generic bigtime
wannabe how-to books that were killing his shelf in the first place!
More self-defeatism!
If he had asked any serious questions about this niche to those distro’ed
publishers, he would have found them likewise shallow and uninformed.
90% of the current players in the niche don’t know anything beyond
their nose. They’re making how-to guides and map books that are nearly all
redundant and none of which scarcely allude to the culture they’re dealing with.
They’re intended to be quickfix cookiecutter moneymakers, parts
of long knockoff fluffy series. Niche killers! Bookstore killers. …Culture killers.
In the end, I said I’m not playing around. I’ll give you some. I’m concerned
about your customers. He said if they sold he’d send me a check. I said fine.
I said “You know, I beat you on all your complaints, right?” He said “You put
up a good fight.” It’s like no matter what the facts were he was going to stick by
the very system that is putting him under.
I hope he realizes a bit of what’s going on. I’m not in it for the money.
Quality first. The money has always followed. Targeting and scale come naturally
to work done right. A workman is worthy of his bread. And it works out that way.
(Quality has no relation to indulgence.) My titles sell out, sell steadily,
not only for short-term but long. I know what that shelf is lacking, what that
type of reader thirsts for. I’d rather accept any handicap in order not to prevent
helping such readers when I have on hand what they’re itching for.
PS: I not only put out rare new titles but I reprint hard to find old ones.
There’s searching for old treasure and then there’s simple unavailability…and
when it’s the CONTENT one is after, a repro is a nice way to keep the ball
rolling.
PPS: Ultrashort run printing is the wave of the future (as Time said) and
bookstores better get used to accomodating it. It won’t have the margin to
sustain distro. It’ll thrive on judgment calls alone, I suspect. It might be
scary, but it’s judgment is the only reason indys are around anyway.
They should be more bold!
****
Are Bookstores the Publisher’s Friend?
I heard online bookstores are doing about half the US book biz now.
I wonder if ignorant bookshop people combined with arrogant
bookshop people are making this scene ripe for an online takeover?
Not that online will be better, anymore than chainstores are better
than the real thing. It’s just that it’s maybe yet another case of
tradespeople and craftsmen abdicating their duty for ego/money
and losing the store as a result. (Just like the trashiness of mom’n’pop
restaurants made the scene ripe for their ruination and takeover by
chains.)
Did anyone see my post about ‘another reason why zining came around’?
—It suggested snotty bookstore people snubbing/hampering small press efforts.
(Creative small press, not ‘how-to’ small press.)
I often run into bookstore snottiness/ignorance which hamper my efforts
to BUY books from them. (There’s counterproductive behavior for ya.)
How much harder must it be for small press folks trying to sell them stuff
to get a fair shake? (Of course, most small presses have done a similar
abdication as everyone else and most product is trash. But that’s why
you need craftsmen as clerks, people who exercise elevated judgement, instead
of kneejerk reflexes.)
I had a heckuva time selling bestselling engineering books to stores in the
early days on pure consignment. Getting them in wasn’t easy. Then once
a given town would sell 100 copies on consignment, new shops would still
hesitate to just carry the titles. It was backbreaking mindnumbing work helping those
folks sell those $50 books like hotcakes. Think about how much tougher
the poets have it? —When the poetry buyers are frustrated poets themselves?
Petty, spiteful maybe? A tough hurdle. But the thing that really kills em
is that the real creative small presses can’t even handle consignment.
They need a store to make an ungrudging assessment and buy outright.
At 30%—not 40, not 50. Who will do that anymore? Anyone? How else does
anything small stand a chance of taking off independently?
We’ll see how my zine-book operation goes. For now I’m glad for the internet.
But it all remains to be seen. Anyone else have luck or no luck in this matter?
*****
Can DIY Publishing Save Bookstores?
Publishing these days is limited by two things: niches
and Hollywood. This seems to apply equally as well to the
small press as to the biggy.
You have the nonfiction techy niche press on the one hand. Educational
stuff. Flourishing? Probably.
Then you have literary stuff. To get published here it seems like you have
to have won a prize and have been stationed at a university to get
published in NYC. And what NYC publishes now has to be able to
be sold to Hollywood in some form. This seems to be the place
where mass readership comes from, where most of the potential
interest in and benefits from reading come from socially, culturally.
But it also seems to be in a MORIBUND state. Nobody reads literature
anymore, statistically. They used to. Why not revive it? Note that
the small presses don’t seem to act much differently here than biggies.
What memorable or significant writer has ever come from the
academic/Hollywood system? And we wonder why readership declines?
The impact of books declines? —We’ve cut ourselves off from
quality and creativity by way of these pacts with academia
and Hollywood.
But there’s a Third Force, not limited by either of the above. Which
seems like it could readily take advantage of any and all potential
of the book form. No holds barred. And that’s Homebrew Publishing.
DIY. Self-publishing. —I suspect that ALL the next big things for
a long time to come will come from DIY presses. These are the
books that could bring millions of folks back into bookstores.
These books will be published, of course, but hardly anyone will see
them and their benefits will not be felt by anyone substantially unless
we also get a Third Option in the business side of distro/bookselling.
Both mainstream and small presses churning out their predictable ‘prodeck’
have dialed into survivability on the current financial system: 25% cost,
50% discount, 10% to the distro, bookstore takes 40%, 30 day terms
direct, 90 day wholesale.
NO DIY HOMEBREW ARTISTIC OUTFIT WILL LAST 2 YEARS
ON THIS BASIS.
The 2nd and only other option at this time is: one-at-a-time consignment
sales with manual followup.
The only hope for a thriving book culture is a Third Option: outright
buy, no returns, 30-40%. Wholesale or retail. We have to make it
simple for these littlest bestest guys. They do small printruns,
their margin is tiny, they have no staff, they can’t call everyone
then call them over again for consignments, they have no resources.
They’re the only hope for creativity, but we’ll never see it if
we don’t give them a Third Option.
Of course, everyone will want this option, so it needs to
be carefully rationed. How to tell what deserves it?
Buyers need to start looking out for the Big Book again. (Ha?)
And look to the DIY presses for it. Obviously, 99% of all books
published are bad. The good thing is that they’re 99% easy to
detect. Finding the Big Book will have to be the result of an
unbiased quality selection. If it’s really impt or new it will
likely strike an early reader kind of negatively. (Change hurts.)
Also: the book that can help overall booksales won’t be
one that caters to any particular pet peeve, ‘issue’ or political
party.
If this kind of book is assisted with proper terms, in return it will
kickstart book sales, readership and western civ. It’ll get folks
back into bookstores. Start em thinking. Not a bad deal.
Don’t worry: even with good terms, the author/publisher will still
make the least profit. The benefits of a boost in readership
will help bookstores and the mainstream most of all.
If we can revive the reading popularity of bygone days once
again, the profits will all go where every interested party wants
them to.
(Hmmm, maybe there are forces out there that don’t WANT
a Big Book, don’t want things SHOOK up. Change is indeed scary.)
The book to compete with TV—and beat it—is out there!
But it’s not where you think it is. Gotta make the way
ready for it if we ever hope to see such a book anywhere
other than the underground or in mail-art.
****
Indy Bksts
Ellis, Detripp wrote:
[]
> For all their public handwringing about how customers should support
> independent bookstores, most allegedly indy bookstores won’t even
> consider buying books directly from independent publishers. “We only
> buy from distributors.” Which means, 40-45% for the publisher, instead
> of 55-60%. That ain’t support for the little guy.
Now you’ll get me steamed.
…And these same distro-loving guys will also refuse to buy books/mags of a
certain topic because the niche area isn’t selling well…because it’s been
KILLED by the wretched books that lend themselves to the dime-a-dozen
approach required to be successfully distro’ed.
Distro, I’m tending to conclude, is suitable only for series, guides,
how-to’s, and easy obvious name brand titles. And of course these have
to all be the best of their niches…but the rest of the market who are
trying to compete in these distro’able areas go for the low-blow cookie
cutter knockoff super-low-overhead staff-produced nickel-a-dozen titles.
Also the endless “we need to do this book to have a presence in this
market and to complete our catalog, to finish our empire so we can
begin tryig to compete unfairly in earnest”—whether they know what
they’re writing about or not. This is what 90% of publishing and 95% of
small press publishing engages in.
The dreck that results is what is killing readership and literacy.
It is most definitely turning bookstores into training grounds for TV.
Media is inter-owned, it’s big, it’s not competitive: there’s an overall
trend and goal. And it’s moving fast
and smooth in that direction. Books are NOT part of their big picture.
I suspect that if bookstores were to disappear tomorrow that none
of the big bookstore players today would feel much of a blip.
These morons forget that literature is the only way that a
culture can know itself, and where the people in it can discover
what their options are.
It’s vital for corporations today to cut off that flow of exploratory
informative flow.
The only thing that matters to corps is docile employees.
The best employee is a ruthless zombie and corps today will
do nothing until they get that as the RULE for humans in our
culture.
Destroying art and its function is the MOST important part
of that process.
We tend to think we’re unimportant little voices out there.
We’re the last thin strand.
*****
Indy Bksts B
Walt Stubbs wrote:
>
> An excellent post, Jeff.
[ ]
> > We tend to think we’re unimportant little voices out there.
> > We’re the last thin strand.
> >
> Zines are utterly unimportant… to 99.99% of the general public. Hell,
> half those people don’t read anything more complicated than a stop
> sign, and most of the readers find TV GUIDE challenging material. We’re
> speaking to a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction, the
> few who won’t settle for less.
You are totally neglecting the PRIME principle behind cultural
influence: the trickle-UP effect. Not that many people read anything
influential or important, but enough do to change the world, when
in fact a cultural change is under way. Big changes almost always
start with SMALL BOOKS! (In particular. Just another case for literature
being the Queen Muse.) Zines kickstart a few people, who then do their
thing, and the snowball starts. Of course it may not happen, but it
always pays to remember how culture works and there’s no reason to
sell such a rich territory short.
*****
Indy bksts C-D
Ellis, Detripp wrote:
[]
> Has it happened before, a little voice banned by major media
> eventually had an impact on that media or society in general ?
I think to an extent that it happens every time.
You get black rhythm music being played in tiny shacks and
then it inspires Elvis who then takes over the world.
Tiny little Howard Finster kinda set off the folk art, art brut
(Art Brew) trend which has had huge side effects in DIY
and multiculturalism.
Any seminal writings there that had big influence but
no one knows about them? —There’s all that forbidden anarchy
stuff, Raoul Veningem and Hakim Bey.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual numbers of those who
read Kerouac and Henry Miller were VERY SMALL and THEN
the bigger scene was launched. Even in the end, with the
whole 60’s thing they inspired, probably the actual numbers
who read those guys was pretty small.
And maybe they in turn were inspired by other even smaller
down’n’out writers.
Was early communist writing put out and promoted in any
great numbers?
Mother Earth News, Whole Earth News: tiny or big when starting out?
The tiny early presence of (the huge) Hong Kong movies in
America recently has totally changed our action movies.
I have a freak author who greatly inspired the whole
underground vibe and friendliness that is still the image of the
mt-bike scene. He did a cult-following little newsletter for years.
I dunno, there must be jillions of more and better examples.
Things start small. Someone then takes the idea and goes big with it.
The DIY Movement is a big deal and zining is a big part of it.
It has only just begun and may find itself into some serious
action one of these days as Corpo-Chain-TQM Reality clinches
the deal on the rest of everything else.
*****
Zines Save Bookstores
Any views from the underground on how bookstores
might be saved?
I would think that it’s easy to see that it’s in the
underground’s best interest that the main structure
of bookstores persists, to give a structure that
our minor views can tag along with. But what happens
without the structure? When it’s ALL TV? Where the
underground then? It takes serious magazines to
support a scene of underground magazines. If we have
a hard time competing in bookstores and on newstands,
how much harder will it be in the total prison of
the New World Order? “May I see your web license, please?”
Well, that’s one notion anyway. Maybe it’s better
all to be blown to bits…then let the stubborn vermin
come crawling from the cracks to rebuild.
Does anyone see bookstores and newstands seriously
picking up on the new potentials of ultra-small presses
and true diversity?
—I had a B&N bookstore clerk tell me last week that they
carry local books but that they need approval since
you can’t just go down and xerox up some stuff and
call it a book. It seems like she missed what the Net
has done. It’s funny that the B&N online bookstore
will happily sell a wide variety of bindings, but maybe
not their ‘actual’ bookstores? Which then is the virtual
bookstore? “If you want real choice go to our online
site.”
—I had a radical bookstore confess that they had serious
trouble with their inventory system: any book that sells
out drops off the face of their records and they can’t
reorder it. The lady admitted in exasperation that it was a deadly
situation. I wonder if the fact that she was a volunteer with no
career to worry about, no axe to grind, no need to look good
for the boss, allowed her to state a simple fact clearly.
—I had a whole herd of clerks at the last big local indy bookstore
tell me, with pride, that they can’t go bothering their bookbuyer
with suggestions as to what to stock, otherwise they’d be even
more swamped than they are now. This ‘indy’ shop is serviced by
Borders, which controls 100% of its inventory! If there’s a book
not auto-stocked that the clerks see is being requested or selling
fast, tough luck. They proudly told me that they can special
order anything however. This store was in the same trap as
the radical store, but they didn’t SEE it. A worse case.
—I had a famous literary bookstore tell me that his bike books
didn’t sell, but that he’d consider carrying my title if it was nationally
distributed. All his existing titles were nationally distro’ed already.
He didn’t see that maybe being distro’ed CAUSED books NOT to sell.
That only certain types of books are conducive to being distro’ed like
‘prodeck.’ He had no interest in the CONTENT of my book.
—What’s this with bookstore clerks not knowing much? A trend?
Good or bad? Reversible?
All in all, it seems like bookstores are behind the curve and that in
their attempt to be more like TV they will fail and implode but that
their owners—TimeWarner—won’t be surprised, it being part of
the plan. If they don’t fail, they’ll simply be converted to centralized
routing systems for sending ‘readers’ to various channels on TV.
What do zinesters think of the potential for LITERACY in our culture?
For LITERATURE? For QUALITY? What’s it all about Alfie?
