Shine On You Crazy Bookstore

I hobble down the main street in my neighborhood, going from one bookstore to another (there are only two). One is a used bookstore which stocks plenty of bargain to fill in the gaps. The other is a new bookstore. Back when I was a sales rep I tried a few times to sell to the new bookstore, but the owners had no interest.

Despite my constant cajoling, I do get it. You have built your reputation on all new books, frontlist and backlist, author events, the ability to return most inventory for credit, preorders, and everything sparkling clean and brand new. Bargain can be daunting. Here are another 30,000 titles to sift through, looking for what will work in your well-curated store. And you must have the courage of your convictions -- no returning for credit. So keep doing what you're doing and make it the best book experience you can for your customers and staff. I still think you're crazy, but good on you. 

You knew there would be more cajoling, so here it is. I was looking for Silent Cavalry by Howell Raines. The used bookstore didn't have it, even the public library didn't have it, at least that day. The new bookstore also did not have it. They offered to order for me, but I decided to wait. 

This was a weekday morning, maybe 11:00. The used bookstore had about 15 people shopping and two buying books. When I went to shop in the new bookstore, I was the only customer there. 

If you had one bargain table with short stacks of between 30 and 50 titles, and then 2 each of another 50 titles to shelve in your sections, you will have invested enough to give bargain a fair shot and you will not break the bank to do it. 

And don't worry about the time it takes to parse those lists and websites. Some of the best sales reps in the business are working for bargain wholesalers. At least for the first order, let them put it together for you. They are motivated to make sure your first order is full of their best sellers to indies. 

Price everything 50% off list price to start. If you're paying $4.00 for a $25.00 book and selling it at $12.50, your margin is good, and you can afford future markdowns if necessary. I would advise marking these with stickers and entering them in your inventory system, "R" before the ISBN, but if that's too much, just dot them and make sure your customers and staff know that these are 50% off list price.

This is just a start, getting your toes wet before jumping in the pool, but you will be pleased enough with the results to come back for more. 

Big Box Detox

Strange what motivates me to write my first post in how many years:

Costco's decision to stop selling books. 

This might be bad for publishers. Print runs will be smaller, especially for blockbusters. My favorite book of 2023 was The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. I wonder what the Costco quantities were for that? In any case, the thing I thought of first was how this shift will impact the only businesses I care about, independent and used bookstores.

The first thing that comes to mind is that it won't, much. The unfortunate loss of a venue where people can buy real books will, also unfortunately, not drive crowds of customers to your doors, at least at first. You will get some increases, more as time goes by. It does present a marketing opportunity where you can tell your community that you're still there, selling way more titles than Costco ever did, and you're there year-round. (Costco is going to sell books during the holidays.) The idea is to make sure that the customers who did shop Costco for books, not just because they happened to be there to pick up a 144 pack of sardines, know you are there.

It would be so nice if publishers suddenly wake up and say hey we should treat these indies better, but don't hold your breath (as if). They are more likely to go full(er) throttle at Target, Walmart, B&N, and other brick and mortar behemoths. They really have to.

Finally, if you're buying from remainder wholesalers, most of what you're buying from them are returns, and a percentage of those returns flow through the publishers to the remainder wholesalers. There will be some changes in the content of their lists as the big flood of Costco returns hits and then quickly subsides. You may not even notice. Costco returns are in better shape than others, but otherwise not so wonderful in quality of titles.

So why am I writing about this if it's not going affect you much? Because it reminded me that I have not nattered at you enough about what I always natter at you about, and that's how buying bargain increases your selection and customer traffic.

Looking at Costco's book displays, you see huge stacks of titles, sometimes double or triple stacked. With so many books per title, selection can't be what yours is. You might have 10,000 titles in your bookstore, or 25,000, or 100,000. This is an advantage you have over any and all of the big box retailers. You can point at exceptions (B&N, maybe), but overall you have the ability to offer a much wider and better curated selection than any of those corporate giants. 

Throwing bargain into the mix increases the depth and breadth of your selection dramatically. Your cost goes down and your profits go up. If you are not buying bargain, you are competing with the big box guys on their playing field. They can't buy bargain the way you can. When they try, it's always minimal and perfunctory. Again, there are clearly exceptions, but they prove the rule.

Booksellers Are Amazing

I keep saying I'm going to get back to regular blog posts, and then I stop. A few months go by, I try to start a post, then stop again. It is a hybrid form of writer's block at work here, built from a conflict between working for a living and writing for my customers and friends, who are often one and the same. It's not just that working for a living takes up time and creative energy that might go into writing. My blog has always been meant to promote bargain books to booksellers, and bound paper books to the digitally addicted. In the times we are living through now, there is an additional conflict between that mission and the need to say something more generally helpful. That conflict gets the best of me when I freeze up and can't write anything.

So, for this post, I am going to stay off my bargain book soapbox and focus on booksellers, those marvelous beings who have, for my whole life, walked a fine line between success and poverty, threatened by chains, online behemoths, competing platforms, and the relentless dumbing down of their cultures.

I would not be writing this post were it not for my readers (yes, okay, both of you!) telling me they miss my posts and, especially now, think other booksellers could benefit from them. And when I say "writing," picture two of my thumbs (I have ten of them) pressing a couple of keys and then disappearing from the vicinity of the blog for another few days, then coming back to delete the few characters they input before. This has been going on for weeks; I hope today will be the day I finally manage to publish my sorry efforts. Thank you for urging me on.

Seeing so many of you doing whatever it takes to stay safe and keep your customers safe, while at the same time investing incredible amounts of energy and elbow grease in getting books to them using whatever tools you have available, is an inspiration. What have I seen and heard? For starters:

💖Arranging books by author, theme, or subject category, as if in a store window or end cap or tabletop display, and posting pictures of those displays on social media, in email, on websites.

💖Here's the amazing Arsen from Boulder Book Store on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2VOht226s&fbclid=IwAR1ceBiV5aknczsTC6u64TvR7d8Kp_CcC4B69Ev2pPQ0GBDFuYrIE7m_qfM

💖Creating packages of books based on what particular customers like and having them delivered to those customers. The customers can then call and say what they don't want, the booksellers picks them up, and collects the payment for what was kept. All of this is done with disinfectant, gloves, and masks applied at the right time in the appropriate places.

💖Fulfilling wishlist items for kids in foster care.

💖And then there's this from the amazing Megan at Hills and Hamlets Bookshop and Underground Books:
https://www.facebook.com/UndergroundBooksCarrollton/videos/247338776503365/?t=2

💖Third Street Books is tweeting black ownded bookstores all day, 6/2/2020:

@ThirdPlaceBooks

💖For those bookstores with pets beloved by many customers, the pets show up in the posts with various backgrounds, maybe including books, maybe not, more just to say hello and comfort the lonely.

💖Doing "buy 3 from this stack, you get one free from this stack" deals. See above bit about posting pictures. (Uh-oh, I feel a plug for bargain books coming on...)

💖Here's Janet at Source Booksellers getting on BookTV on C-Span:
https://twitter.com/sourcebksellers

💖TONS of readings online. Booksellers reading children's books for the kids, authors reading novels for the grownups.

💖Here's Third Place Books raising money (and books) for students in need:
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/books-students-fund

💖Several friends are in danger of losing their businesses during this time. Some are doing "GoFundMe" drives, asking for donations to keep them going. One pays her employees whether they stay at home or not, whether or not they are getting government money, whether or not she ever gets her PPP. Another, who did finally get her PPP, announced that she is going ahead with her long-delayed plans to finish her build-out on her new location, making sure everybody knows she is still in business, is not going away, and is aggressively moving forward.

💖Some are driving (or riding bicycles, or walking) summer reading mystery bags or boxes to customers who have subscribed to the service. At first, they had the impression that this was partly charity on the part of their customers, but so many have said that it's so great that they want to continue past the reopening, that now they think, if it was charitable to start, now it is just another fantastic way to sell books.

💖And many, whether or not they've been told they can reopen, would rather not expose their staff and customers to danger, as Hannah from The Book Shop at Beverly Farms writes here:
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/05/22/massachusetts-reopening-small-business-hannah-harlow

Ostensibly, I suppose, all of these efforts are meant to, eventually, in some way, directly or indirectly, lead to sales, but they sure feel like they are really there to help their communities through this time. It all takes immense amounts of work, time, planning, thinking, creating. Who else, what other merchant professional does this? Outside of some nonprofit organizations, health and medical professionals, and the military, are there other industries like this? Our extended family of booksellers is made of some tough, good, wonderful stuff.

Two Short Questions, Too Long Answers

I had a dear customer respond quickly to my post of yesterday with questions and suggestions. I am transposing them here, much paraphrased to protect the innocent, with my answers below each:

Q: What are ways us regular remainder buyers can improve the quality of the titles we get access to?

A: You might be subtly alluding to the fact that I have terrible organizational skills and lose the thread often, leaving you wondering whatever happened to old Ben Archer. But when I send you my lists, and I promise to send them to you more often, I really am sending you everything I can find. To fine tune to the extent that the big remainder buyers see better lists than small remainder buyers would be so conterproductive as to cause our sales to decrease as we spend time figuring out what to show who and when. And the big buyers that compete with you for inventory, meaning the largest indies and used bookstores, not Safeway or Dollar General, want exactly what you want, 90% of the time. However, all that being said, sales reps almost always send the most info, lists, "good stuff," nudges, etc., to customers who respond. It hard to send lists, deals, and announcements week after week, month after month, to a "customer" who never, or almost never, responds. I have very few customers, count 'em on one hand, who respond immediately to 75% of what I send them, and, yes, guilty as charged, they do get my attention. I'm sure most of what I am writing here applies to other reps. It's human nature. (Dear customer: I hope it is obvious that I am NOT talking about YOU!)
Think of your customers, walking into your bookstore. Some come in almost every day. They may not buy anything most days, but you get to know them. You think of them when you order books. You call them when something comes in that you know they would want. 

Access Tip: The biggest buyers, and lots of smaller ones as well, visit our warehouse. Some visit once a year, some once per month, some visit for a few days at a time, some a few hours, but that is the best way to get the best books. You can't just show up, we need to set up appointments, but start talking to me about it now, and we can make it happen. 

Q: How can I get a better rate of fulfillment?

A: You can order immediately, you can order on our site (well, all right, that might actually be a bit better), call ahead to reserve inventory, you can cajole, berate, plead, and harass, you won't get 100% fill on anything but a handful of orders. Some might be 95%, but 100% is the holy grail. Sometimes books are damaged out after we receive your order. Sometimes our receiving process glitches and we did not get what we thought we got. We have over 30,000 titles here, but about 10,000 of those are available in quantities under 10 and you don't see them on our lists for the simple reason that the fill rate on those is so low. (Tell me if you want to see such a list and I'll send it to you, as long as you consider yourself forewarned.) If all you cared about was fill rate (like the chains), you would only order from lists where the available quantities were high, say, 100 minimum. You can ask me for that, too, but you won't buy much. I know others might have better fill rates, but we have the best books in the industry, so it's a trade off worth making.
Going back to those few hyper-responsive customers, they have the same fill rates as everybody else, but they order the same title over and over, whenever they see it on a list, until they get it.

This customer also had a suggestion, for me to create a "Pro Tips" page, which I will do, just need to give it a little thought. While most readers of this blog are pros, I am not, so will need some more suggestions to get that project done.

Thank you for being a bookseller!!!

Ben Back on the Blog

It has been a long time since I've posted. My plan is to post once or twice per week, add a "best seller" page for books we at Book Country are selling best to our indie and used bookstore customers, and put daily deals and links in the "Deals and Steals" page. 

Since my only concern is our customers, I'd love to hear questions from you, either about Book Country or the industry in general. While I probably will not have the best answers to your industry questions, I can point you in the right direction or get those answers for you and credit the source when the the source wants to be credited.

I will stay with some of my old threads. I see in PW that print sales were a bit down in 2019, mostly due to lack of blockbuster best sellers (and maybe lower print runs?), but clearly, the billionaires and the publishers were wrong when they said that books would be replaced by digital media. People will be reading beautiful wonderful physical books long into the future, as long as there are publishers printing them.

WAY more bookstores have opened since I last posted here. What happened? Borders and Barnes & Noble were said to be killing them, Amazon wanted to kill them, Walmart and Costco and all the other big baddies were supposedly killing them... but they weren't and they didn't. The experience of shopping in a bookstore, especially a local, one-of-a-kind bookstore can't be matched. The ones that did go out of business simply were not buying enough bargain books. Oh all right, yes, I am joking, but take a look. Not that big a joke. The hugely successful, big indiependent bookstores that have survived, thrived, and dominated, buy a LOT of bargain books. I will hit that point hard in coming posts.

I want to post more about how successful booksellers work bargain into their mix, how they merchandise, how they use it to generate sales and interest. Publishers are not huge fans of bargain, though they should be, and the trade press is all about making the publishers happy. After all, they support them. Years ago, PW and The Bookseller had occasional columns about the bargain book industry, but that has all but disappeared. If I can help make up for that dearth in any small way, I will.

Again, if you have any questions or suggestions, anything you want to share with other booksellers, please email me. Most of you reading this blog know me, so just email me. Email works better than comments on the blog.

Thank you for reading!

Booksellers and booksellers

Booksellers are the people who sell books for the independent bookstores that employ them, the people who, when they see you walk into their bookstore, walk to a shelf, grab a book, and put it in your hands. They do this because they know you and they know how to put you together with the books you need to read. You buy the book and read it and are not surprised to discover that you never want to put it down.

How wonderful it is to have these people in our lives, without whom we would not have a livelihood. Now that e-books and other gadgets are proving not to be the death knell for bookstores the manufacturers and publishers were hoping they were, it's safe to say human booksellers are still necessary, still amazing, and still sought out by readers everywhere.

'Tis the Season

This is the time of year I start to hear from customers about how they're doing, how their sales increased, or stayed flat, or went down. Some are reporting that their sales went through the roof. Maybe a chain store that opened near them in the 90s closed, and now the independent owns their town again. Maybe they opened a new location and it went gangbusters. Or maybe the local demographics had a sudden change. I had one customer tell me their sales went up by over 100% this year. Of course I told him it was all due to the bargain books he was buying from me, but who would listen to an old remainder rep.

The ABA says they had another increase in members this year, and several bookstores were sold to new owners rather than closed, another very positive new trend. When I was at CIROBE a few weeks ago I noticed more young (read: under 40) people than usual, and these included buyers and owners. Recently when I am prospecting (sorry if I spammed you recently, it's a hazard of having a bookstore) I have a hard time keeping up with new businesses. 

The news is never all good. I lost a few customers this year. I hear from others that they are laying off employees or cutting their buying budgets or both. Every one of these booksellers did everything right. Some were the best booksellers for miles around, but something tipped the scales and they had to take measures or throw in the towel. 

There are a few oft-heard refrains. Amazon and the rest of the e-world are still taking up lots of space in the marketplace, even as people begin to go back to real books. Browsing continues to seem like the forgotten passtime of a bygone era, though I have heard a few booksellers say that they are seeing it ticking up again. Customers walk into a bookstore with their phone out and show it to the bookseller and ask for the book on the screen, but it seems like a bit fewer of them just turn around and walk out if the book is not in stock. Creating impulse sales has become much more of a science than it used to be (cue the plug for bargain books...).

To my readers who have decided to close up shop at the end of the year, I want to say thank you for your business over all these decades, thank you for being pillars of your communities, for providing beautiful spaces and experiences for the friends, family, strangers and travelers that walked in your door, for being the reference librarians you didn't know you had to be, and for being such gracious hosts to all of us in the trade.

To those of you who have recently opened a bookstore, or who are thinking about it, or bought one this year, thank you for taking a chance on our wonderful old industry. You will find everybody in this new family of yours strangely accommodating and eager to help in whatever way they can, and I am not just talking about publishers and other suppliers, but other booksellers as well, often even the competition in your own town.

There is a lot to learn, lots of new challenges, and there are lots of new opportunities. We might be a bunch of recalcitrant old curmudgeons, but we're here to help. Welcome to the book business.