Why Tobias Buckell's Latest Isn't Stocked at Borders, and other stories

[davidlevine]

This is a really important essay for anyone who wants to understand the bookselling industry today. Read it.

http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-being-skipped.html

(Hat tip to jaylake)

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, this guy is an economic right-wingnut, and says at least two totally asinine things. So I'm not sure whether to believe any of the rest of it, either.

[davidlevine]

Hmm... it all seemed to hang together to me. What are the two asinine things?

[calimac.livejournal.com]

1. The belligerently self-righteous claim that bookstores aren't required to carry everything. Narrowly it's true, but it misses the point. First, good bookstores have always had everything in print available for order, even if they don't carry it in the shop. Second, the way he phrases it, a bookstore isn't required to carry anything. Which shows how he's side-stepped what "requires" means. He treats it as if he were dismissing the idea of a legal requirement, when what's really being asked for is for stores to be of service to their customers.

2. The claim that chain bookstores beat out independents because they had better selection and service. True enough that many independent bookstores were just awful (I remember two SF specialty stores, one with miserable selection, the other with offensive lack of service, whose demises were a relief) and that chain stores are very big, though size does not equal selection. But he omits the principal reason, the cause whenever big firms drive out independents, all the way back to John D. the oilman: undercutting the competition.

[alicebentley]

I didn't hear it as "belligerently self-righteous", I heard it as a cautionary "let's not forget" as spoken to an audience that clearly *does* forget it every now and then.
Between the authors, angry or despairing over their title not being shelved, and the customers, frustrated or belittling because what they hoped to find wasn't there, booksellers (as well as marketing folk) are treated to a pretty much unending barrage of unhappiness from the very people they most want to impress.

The conversation about what lead to the shift from [many independents and just a few chain shops] to [many chain shops and just a few independents] is long, complicated, and not suitable for a sub comment buried in Dave's journal. For here, I'll say that I don't think Andrew was saying that the relative qualities of the two groups were the determining causes, just that it wasn't a case of then-was-good, now-is-bad, and mistaking the two types of statements, as well as declaring that this would make someone a "right-wingnut" shows more about the reader's bias than the writer's.

Let me answer your next comment as well, and say that comparing [ordering a book, entering the data into the inventory system, receiving and counting the book in, finding space on the shelf, paying full wholesale for it, waiting several months to see how it does, deciding that it's just not going to move, taking it back off the shelf, packing it up with the appropriate documentation, paying for shipping and hoping that maybe this time the credit will go through without an argument] is not even remotely like [deciding at the sales meeting that this title might not do as well] and to equate the two is either showing exceptional ignorance or verging on troll material.

Oh, hey Dave, sorry for blurting all over your journal comments, but this really hit a vein with me.

[davidlevine]

Worry not. The conversation is fascinating.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

The things you cite as "showing more about the reader's bias" and "exceptional ignorance or verging on troll material" are pretty flagrant misreadings, and might be considered as verging on troll material themselves.

In a sense a good bookstore does carry everything, even if it's not on the shelf, because a good bookstore will order anything a customer asks for. Sometimes even on spec, allowing the customer to look through the arrived book and decide they don't want it.

But even leaving that aside, it's possible to reply to "waah, they don't carry my book" whinging without a belligerent implication of "hey, they're not required to carry anything, so be happy with the crumbs you're tossed, you cretins." That sort of economics-drives-all and if-you-don't-like-it-tough attitude is very definitely conveyed, and that is what makes wingnuttery.

I didn't say anything mistaking a "determining cause" statement for a "then was good, now is bad" statement, and in fact I cited the existence of some really lousy independents. He just left out the principal determining cause, and by emphasizing only the improved service and selection, which as often as not was true, he gives more of an impression of "then was bad, now is good." That's as misleading a conclusion as the opposite is. Belief in the inherent superiority of big business is also a sign of economic right-wingnuttery.

You paint a touching picture of bookstores painstakingly entering books into inventory systems and packing them up individually to be returned, and waiting for the credit to go through, but in fact most large bookstores use centralized inventory databases that list far more books than they actually carry, and most of those books come from large distributors and can be packed up en masse, while the credit comes from the same distributors, and there'd be the same credit problems (or not) regardless, unless the store never made any returns at all.

I'm not equating [all that] with deciding at a sales meeting that a book might not do well. I'm saying that using [that] as a reason for therefore not carrying the book is a lousy reason, and any other reasons make even less sense. If you're an actual bookstore, and not WalMart or a supermarket rack, not every book you sell has to be a bestseller, and if there's enough space, there's room for some flexibility.

[alicebentley]

I think we may have to draw a close to this comparison with the ever-favorite "agree to disagree" as I pretty much disagree with every point you've made here. Either I'm not making my points clearly enough, or you're not hearing what I'm trying to say.

And I really need to get back to my homework.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and one that I have a bit of experience in. Perhaps next week (after the current deadlines pass) I'll write something more substantial about this over at my LJ.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Well, I will await that with interest, as I'm really curious as to what you disagree with. Do you disagree that large bookstores will order any book in print a customer asks for? I know it to be true, for I have done it. Do you disagree that they use inventory databases that include books they don't stock? I know it to be true, for I have seen it. Do you disagree that most regular stock comes from large distributors? I know that to be true as well.

As for what things I am equating, I claim an author's privilege to know my own intent, and as for what I am mistaking, when it's the exact opposite of what I said, and I'd made a particular point of pointing it out, I don't know how to respond.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I should add that I have heard of bookstores being reluctant to carry books that were not available through standard distributors, unless they were confident the book would do well or a customer specifically asked for it. And the reason was precisely the hassle and paperwork of dealing with lots of individual tiny publishers. That I can understand. My point was that that motive can't be the cause for deciding not to take a book expected not to do particularly well, when that book comes from an established publisher via an established distributor, and exists on standard inventory databases.

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

1) Tone is a tricky thing on the Internet -- I can say that I didn't intend to sound "belligerently self-righteous," but you can counter that I came across that way to you. And we'd both be right. I will say it wasn't my intention; I was trying to work through some complicated background that closely affects writers' careers and that I didn't think they had generally been informed about.

I completely agree that a good bookstore should always place special-order for a customer, assuming the book that customer wants is available with a typical discount from one of the major distributors. There are reports that Borders does not always do this, and to the extent that those reports are true, Borders fails to be a good bookstore.

I don't think you're saying that stores should be expected to have physical copies of all books in print on hand, and, if so, then we're in agreement there.

2) We may disagree on this point; large retailers do have some more leeway to compete on price, but the Robinson-Patman act (and other anti-trust legislation) has kept the discounts from publisher to retailers at parity for the same terms.

I tend to think the major reasons a large number of independents went out of business was undercapitalization and poor business practices; you seem to think that predatory competition was the largest reason. I agree that the competition was one reason, but many of the still-existing independents had competition equally as bad, and have managed to survive -- that suggests, to me, that the competition in and of itself wasn't the defining factor.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments.

Re 1), I would accept that your tone was the result of feeling exasperation at what you considered unjustified pouting.

Re 2), I was not thinking so much of discounts provided by publishers to retailers as those provided by retailers to customers: B&N 40%-off loss-leaders, "book club" coupons and so on that make up for decreased profits with induced customer loyalty and simple volume. Smaller stores have a harder time doing that.

The cause for lost business may be an imponderable. If you can say that sufficiently well-run independents have survived against competition, I can say that some poorly-run stores survived a long time until the competition showed up. So it wasn't just being poorly run that killed them. And in fact some very well-run and even economically strong independents - Cody's in Berkeley an outstanding example - have collapsed in recent years.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, the only books that B&N will refuse to order for customers on request are print-on-demand, because they have (as a chain) suffered through too many POD authors or agents ordering books and not buying them when they arrive.

There may be books that they can't order because those books aren't available to them, but that's a different matter. Even B&N, large as it is, doesn't have infinite resources to maintain purchasing accounts with every publisher in America, though they do a pretty good job of it.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

And I meant to add: What costs does "skipping" avoid? Unless space is tight, and we're being assured that chain stores are very big, or your inventory control system is pissant, which sounds unlikely, a bookstore isn't sinking unrecoverable capital into ordering a book that might not sell.

Or has there been a disappearance of the returns policy that used to be standard in the book business?

If so, that, far more than anything else, would explain the change in the bookstores.

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

Chains may be big, but their shelf-space isn't infinite. Each store has a certain number of books that they can shelve in a specific category at any one time, so there does need to be decisions made as to which books will go in that space.

Every book a store buys reduces its available credit and its available budget. (Even assuming, as you seem to be, that the retailer can and will return it before the actual bill comes due.)

Also: returns might be more costly to publishers than to retailers, but they're not zero-cost at the retail level. Processing returns takes man-hours on both the store (pulling and packing) and the distribution center (sorting and repacking) level, plus time and opportunity costs at many levels of the business. A company that spends its time managing the products it's not selling isn't focusing on what it is selling.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Both points are true, but from what I read of these not-carry decisions, they're not approached from an angle of "we might like to carry this, but there's not enough space on the shelves," which is what you might hear if space were the issue.

And while returning is not zero-cost, the idea of not carrying a book on the grounds of the cost of processing the return in case it doesn't sell seems grotesque. (On the other hand, a lot of things in bookselling seem grotesque.) Further, in a large store you're going to be doing a lot of returns anyway, so the added marginal cost is even smaller.

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

I think you're focusing on the individual book level, and there it always seems plausible to add just one more -- after all, what's the marginal cost to a giant chain of one more book?

But a large, complicated inventory -- not to mention a budget -- can't be managed on that kind of ad hoc level.

And, of course, if you start adding one book here and two books there, pretty soon you don't have room on the shelves for all the books you've bought. That either leads to stock being returned even quicker to make room for the new stuff, or to books never making it to the shelves. (And neither of those will be good, for authors or for bookstores.)

It makes the most sense if you think of the buyer, who starts each month with a set budget of dollars to spend and a certain number of shelf-feet to fill. Once the money's gone and the shelf-feet are full, he's done, even if there are some decent books that he didn't get to buy.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

But now we're back (if you've read the earlier comments in this topic) to the picture of the poor widdle giant chain bookstore that just finds it so hard to keep the names of more than a dozen bestsellers in its cute little head at one time ... oh wait, it does carry more books than that.

Seriously, the kind of restrictions you're here describing don't match up with the severer limitations described in your original post.

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

I think you're deliberately misrepresenting the scale here -- it's not "more than a dozen bestsellers," it's a store with at least 10,000 active SKUs at one time. Your position seems to be that if they have 10,000, then they could have 20,000, or 50,000, or 100,000.

If you don't see a difference there, then I suppose we just radically disagree.

Every single additional SKU has to be managed, and it's disingenuous to pretend that it's just "one book," since there are thousands upon thousands of books in an identical position.

Seriously -- how many more different titles do you think Borders should put on its shelves right now, and how should they make them fit? (Double-shelving?)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not deliberately misrepresenting the scale - I'm indulging in a little sarcasm to suggest that the argument only works on a much smaller scale than a large chain bookstore.

In terms of the costs of inventory control (that was what Alice was using as the limiting factor, not physical space on the shelves), the larger the base you start with, the more can be added without straining the system. That's a basic rule of any database.

So no, 20K isn't the same as 10K, but there's a lot less difference between the two than a bestseller-only sideline rack doubling it's capacity.

But even that is beside the point. The whole "they can't carry every book in print" argument is a red herring, an excluded middle. The question you were attempting to address in your original post was about the total exclusion of large chunks of the brand-new midlist. That's not the same thing at all.

You also imply that this is a relatively recent and growing phenomenon. So in terms of physical space on shelves, one can only assume that shelf space in those giant Borders is being squeezed off into hyperspace. [That was sarcasm again.]

[andrewwheeler.livejournal.com]

After I posted, I thought of a stronger argument -- for your side. Borders recently tightened their inventory quite seriously for financial reasons. So I think most people would say that Borders currently is stocking fewer SKUs (or, in their case, BINCs) than would be best from an inventory-management perspective. (Some Borders stores have shelves looking a bit sparse these days.)

So the shelf-space argument is still a decent one, generally and in theory, but I won't try to rely on it here. Borders is in a cash crunch, and that's behind their recently increased number of skips. (But hold that thought.)

I'm not entirely sure we are talking about "the total exclusion of large chunks of the midlist," since no one is talking publicly about the number of books skipped in any category. We do know that Sly Mongoose and Lord Tophet were skipped, because their authors came out and said so. And from the interest in this topic -- and many of the comments around the 'net -- it looks like many other authors have had similar experiences. But we really don't know what the percentage of skips was for Borders in, for example, the first six months of 2007 versus the first six months of 2008.

So we're assuming that there are suddenly more skips, but we don't really know that. (No one's even checked to see what the number of books published looks like -- there can be an increase in skips under the same inventory policies if the volume of books published goes up.)

That's as far as I'm willing to go without better data: it looks like Borders is skipping a larger percentage of probably the same volume of books published, almost entirely for financial reasons, and that looks to me to be a debatable inventory strategy at best.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in knowing as well.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Andrew Wheeler is not an economic right-wingnut. I don't know what makes you think that, but it turns out not to be the case. I've known him for quite a long time online, and really, he just isn't. I generally respect your opinions even when I disagree with you, but you're just flat wrong on this one.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, he is one, because he offers a right-wingnut way of looking at economics. The shoe fits. See my further comment for detail.