Why do so many booksellers put so much time and resources into making and keeping bargain books a big part of their bookstores? I asked a group of bookstore buyers and owners and the response was consistent and humbling.
A buyer at a bookstore that sells new books, this one with a large bargain department that could be its own bookstore, said: "Bargain books can create positive word-of-mouth in the community. When people talk with others about a full-price book they talk about the book and not where they bought it. But when it's a bargain, that becomes part of the story they tell -- I just got this great book for $4.98 at such-and-such bookstore."
He continued: "And on a personal note -- booksellers are fellow travelers with many low wage folks. So I always get a thrill ringing up a customer with a stack of bargain books. I'm incredibly happy that they got such a great deal on books they want to read."
An owner / buyer at another bookstore that sells new books said she loves "having a great selection of kids' bargain books. There are tons of gems out there if you look for them. Kids go through so many books and new books add up quickly. Even more important, I see families who probably would never buy their child a $17 book and who wouldn't even go down to our kids room, pick up bargain books outside the store. We're putting books into kids' hands who might not otherwise get to have their own books."
[I have always felt that part of my mission is to put more books into the hands of more people, including many who could not otherwise afford them, so it's always good to hear from booksellers who feel the same way.]
From another buyer at another bookstore that sells new books: "Aside from the obvious stuff, remainders are fun, in that the selection for both customers and buyers is unpredictable."
[I always mean to, and forget to, stress the fun aspect of bargain. Many buyers and booksellers, on both sides of the buying counter, including me, talk about this as being one of the reasons for buying bargain.]
She continued: "It’s not just the latest/hottest stuff, it’s books you always wanted to read but forgot about when their moment passed. It’s books you loved and now can buy for all your friends. It’s art books at prices younger/budget-constrained people can afford—it makes art less elitist. The lower prices allow readers to experiment and indulge curiosities they can’t when new hardcovers are $25-plus and 'paperback' no longer means cheap."
"I think it’s really the variety and constant surprises that I like most. That’s why I’d always rather get new stuff in than restock titles I've had before (except at Christmas: have to have those books customers saw back in June…the perfect thing for Uncle Bob!)."
[Other buyers reorder much stock that sells out and develop bargain bestsellers in this manner.]
From a buyer at a bookstore that sells both new and used books:
"The thrill of the hunt has always been a personal reason why I like bargain. This means searching in the most unlikely places, the relatively small quantities, and being quick with responses, with the better books being limited in supply. Testing your book knowledge against the clock, and all those other great buyers."
He continued: "Definitely add-on sales. We always have people buying new books, a few bargain books, and a sideline or two. The other thing worth mentioning perhaps is that you can market bargain tables like new tables- staff picks, coordinated displays, etc. I think it’s such an afterthought for most bookstores."
[It's interesting that so many bookstores which have made themselves experts in bargain have done the same with sidelines.]
From an owner / buyer at a used bookstore:
"Bargain books have changed over the years. I used to use them to fill categories that were not coming in the door fast enough. I bought a lot of history, science, philosophy and other non-fiction. They really allowed me to fill in and keep a well rounded store."
[I recommend that bookstores selling new books use this category-building capacity of bargain as well, especially in sections such as poetry, philosophy, history, and art. With little effort and expense, you can greatly expand the variety and sales in any category.]
He continued: "Bargain books now seem to be more about returns from big box stores. So they allow me to keep mid-list inventory in stock. Thus I am buying more fiction, kids and art books. I can now get good pop-up books that are not broken.
Bargain books are great for window displays. I'd say more than 3/4 of the books in my window are from remainder dealers. They look nice, and when people want them, I can pull from overstock rather than having to redo my window every day."
[Again, this works for all bookstores.]
From an owner / buyer in the college market:
"We often find books that are used as course adoptions- we can price hurts in relation to their retail price at times rather than benchmarking their net price- offering sale books that come from titles in active circulation ( hurts ) gives us a chance to offer sale prices on books that people are still paying full price and that generates the sense of a bargain even greater than a remainder find."
This from an owner/buyer at a bookstore that sells new, used, and bargain:
"We started as a 500 sq ft used bookstore, expanding over the decades to 5,000 and then to 10,000 sq ft with the addition of new books and sidelines. However, the used books have always continued to be a big draw and we soon realized that the demand for used books far exceeded the supply. That's when we discovered remainders. Knowing our customers' interests in new & used books helped us to select remainder titles that turned over very rapidly. Bringing our new-book buyer to trade shows and remainder warehouses offered her the opportunity of filling out whole sections of the store with only a modest investment -- e.g., crafts, art, photography, memoir."
And he wrapped up with the kind of financial details I don't see much of and am very thankful to this bookseller for sharing:
"Last year we grossed $265K in remainders, 6-7% of our total sales. Purchases were $147K for a net of $118K, a 55% gross margin. Sweet."
I also heard from buyers, owners, events coordinators, and other booksellers saying that bargain books help with customer retention, always being interesting and drawing them back in. A customer running short on time, shopping on their lunch break, might come back on a day off to get a longer look at the bargain tables.
Others say it's like saying "thank you" to their customers. Some of these under-price bargain, cutting their margins on targeted categories to make the prices so low they become a topic of conversation among their customers and help spread the word about their bookstores, reinforcing the first buyer's point.
Everybody seems to value the impulse sales that bargain brings in. The strategically placed bargain table can multiply sales when customers, walking to the areas of the bookstore where they will find the books they came in to buy, can't resist the great titles at great prices they see on the way, or that are stacked near the point of purchase.
Booksellers whose businesses rely heavily on off-site sales, such as college bookstores with buy-back events, children's bookstores running school book fairs, or any bookstore doing kiosks at convention centers during expos, often report using bargain to stock these events between 50% and 100%.
Finally and importantly, customers sometimes tell booksellers that they first started reading real books because they were in the bookstore with their child or friend or significant other and saw something interesting on the bargain table, bought it on impulse, and discovered that the reading experience was so much better than reading on an e-reader.
That should kindle your interest in bargain!
Monday, March 30, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Own Your Bestseller List
When I was an independent sales rep, before I came back to Book Country in January, I indicated "Sellers" in my lists. In the beginning, my only criteria was that I sold 10 or more copies of a title within a week. After the first couple of years in business, entire lists began to look like best-seller lists, so I raised the bar a bit. Anything that sold 10 copies to one customer on one order became a "Seller." I would also do cumulative totals every few weeks and add anything that sold 25 or more altogether within that period. Later I raised that to 20 and 50.
Why was this such an exercise in moving targets? I always thought it was because I had such a great variety of customers, almost all of whom were small to mid-size independent retailers, including bookstores, discount variety stores, used bookstores, and internet marketplace sellers. If I saw the results of sales to thousands of customers from a huge, single, and more stable title list, I reasoned, I would see less variety, less change, and more titles that were once actual bestsellers on the national lists.
Well, here I am with a huge list, and the best sellers are more varied than ever. It is as if every single bookseller in the world has a different idea of what sells on their bargain tables, or bargain page, or book fair... or shoe store...
Some of the largest buyers of remainders and bargain books buy very broadly, sometimes buying thousands of titles per order, but most of these big customers buy narrowly and deep. This is why I and many other folks selling bargain books to independent bookstores constantly tell their customers that one of the best ways to differentiate themselves from their competition is to buy bargain, broadly and frequently. If you buy what makes sense to you to merchandise in your bookstore, the bookseller a few blocks away will be buying something almost completely different, and the chain store at the mall will not buy a single title you pick. That scenario may not hold 100% of the time, but it's pretty close.
It can be amusing how one buyer will laugh at another's picks. They don't do this at trade shows, and they don't do it knowingly, but there have been so many times I have gone from one account to another, showing jackets or samples, and the second buyer will pass up most of what the first buyer bought, sometimes commenting on how I thought to show them such dreary stuff. Meanwhile, the guy across town is selling those very chestnuts to his customers all day, often the same customers. I'm not saying they're wrong. They can often show me dusty stacks of those titles the other guy is buying. Nothing puts the indie in independent like bargain.
I think the best illustrations for this dynamic are the internet marketplace sellers. They have various algorithms and software to show them what will work best, basically processing the lists without looking at them. One would assume they would all buy almost exactly the same titles in very much the same quantities, but they don't. They also have their own customers, skewing their numbers whether their presence is detected or not.
Of course there is popcorn at the movie theater. Some books you could not stop from selling to everybody if you submerged them in water for 3 months. Okay, that might slow them down a bit, but you know what they are. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs come to mind. Or any children's book with stickers... Or any good mixed drink recipe book... (I guarantee that over half of the buyers reading this post are thinking "What's he talking about? Why would anybody buy any of that?")
Another bestseller list I once produced was my "Daily Bestseller List." This was just whatever sold best that day. If I had a slow day, it might be something that sold 10 copies. The interesting thing about that list was how almost nothing repeated. There were a few titles that came back a few times, but over the course of the years I kept it up, a small handful showed up more than once. It was a popular page here, generating lots of views, but clearly, my customers, if they were looking at it at all, saw it as a curiosity.
Speaking of my customers, you patient, long suffering lot, I am not berating you, only pointing out, in a round-about way, how well you know your stuff, because if you did not, you would not be so incredibly successful for all these decades we have known each other. This post, as all of mine are, one way or another, is aimed at the readers who are thinking of getting into bookselling, and the booksellers who are thinking of getting into bargain. Get in and stay in. Buy wide and shallow, at least to start. Trust your gut, but take chances too. Listen to your customers and your staff. Create your bargain bestsellers. And have fun.
For more of thoughts about bargain best-sellers (bestsellers, best sellers... more iterations mean more page views!), see these posts:
On the concept of building your list:
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/anti-best-sellers.html
About focusing too narrowly on your bestsellers:
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/cherry-pickers-dilemma.html
Why was this such an exercise in moving targets? I always thought it was because I had such a great variety of customers, almost all of whom were small to mid-size independent retailers, including bookstores, discount variety stores, used bookstores, and internet marketplace sellers. If I saw the results of sales to thousands of customers from a huge, single, and more stable title list, I reasoned, I would see less variety, less change, and more titles that were once actual bestsellers on the national lists.
Well, here I am with a huge list, and the best sellers are more varied than ever. It is as if every single bookseller in the world has a different idea of what sells on their bargain tables, or bargain page, or book fair... or shoe store...
Some of the largest buyers of remainders and bargain books buy very broadly, sometimes buying thousands of titles per order, but most of these big customers buy narrowly and deep. This is why I and many other folks selling bargain books to independent bookstores constantly tell their customers that one of the best ways to differentiate themselves from their competition is to buy bargain, broadly and frequently. If you buy what makes sense to you to merchandise in your bookstore, the bookseller a few blocks away will be buying something almost completely different, and the chain store at the mall will not buy a single title you pick. That scenario may not hold 100% of the time, but it's pretty close.
It can be amusing how one buyer will laugh at another's picks. They don't do this at trade shows, and they don't do it knowingly, but there have been so many times I have gone from one account to another, showing jackets or samples, and the second buyer will pass up most of what the first buyer bought, sometimes commenting on how I thought to show them such dreary stuff. Meanwhile, the guy across town is selling those very chestnuts to his customers all day, often the same customers. I'm not saying they're wrong. They can often show me dusty stacks of those titles the other guy is buying. Nothing puts the indie in independent like bargain.
I think the best illustrations for this dynamic are the internet marketplace sellers. They have various algorithms and software to show them what will work best, basically processing the lists without looking at them. One would assume they would all buy almost exactly the same titles in very much the same quantities, but they don't. They also have their own customers, skewing their numbers whether their presence is detected or not.
Of course there is popcorn at the movie theater. Some books you could not stop from selling to everybody if you submerged them in water for 3 months. Okay, that might slow them down a bit, but you know what they are. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs come to mind. Or any children's book with stickers... Or any good mixed drink recipe book... (I guarantee that over half of the buyers reading this post are thinking "What's he talking about? Why would anybody buy any of that?")
Another bestseller list I once produced was my "Daily Bestseller List." This was just whatever sold best that day. If I had a slow day, it might be something that sold 10 copies. The interesting thing about that list was how almost nothing repeated. There were a few titles that came back a few times, but over the course of the years I kept it up, a small handful showed up more than once. It was a popular page here, generating lots of views, but clearly, my customers, if they were looking at it at all, saw it as a curiosity.
Speaking of my customers, you patient, long suffering lot, I am not berating you, only pointing out, in a round-about way, how well you know your stuff, because if you did not, you would not be so incredibly successful for all these decades we have known each other. This post, as all of mine are, one way or another, is aimed at the readers who are thinking of getting into bookselling, and the booksellers who are thinking of getting into bargain. Get in and stay in. Buy wide and shallow, at least to start. Trust your gut, but take chances too. Listen to your customers and your staff. Create your bargain bestsellers. And have fun.
For more of thoughts about bargain best-sellers (bestsellers, best sellers... more iterations mean more page views!), see these posts:
On the concept of building your list:
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/anti-best-sellers.html
About focusing too narrowly on your bestsellers:
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/cherry-pickers-dilemma.html
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Distant Relations
In our warehouse in McKeesport, here in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, about an hour's drive from Pittsburgh International Airport, Book Country Clearing House stocks between 10 and 12 million books in a 300,000+ square foot warehouse.
This is a sight to behold and can't be appreciated without coming here and walking every aisle on both floors. And buyers do exactly that. I have harangued my customers and prospects for years about buying bargain books. Many do buy, though I (of course!) think they should buy way more. Some prospects say they are not for them, they're not worth the trouble.
Really? I had a customer last week who traveled from Nigeria to visit out little warehouse. Buyers come from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, England, Austria, Canada, Australia, India... I should also mention they come from New York, Seattle, Portland (both), Omaha, and Los Angeles. I'm just rattling off the ones I can think of off the top of my head, there are way more. These buyers are not vacationing. They are not on a bookseller's holiday. This is hard work. They work for hours and days in very cold or very hot conditions, on their feet for hours at a time.
The conversations I have with some of them can be enlightening. One, who owns 3 bookstores somewhere in the USA, said he started buying bargain about twenty years ago, but did not put them in all three stores. He gradually added them and now, in the third store, he sees a 20% sales increase because of bargain.
So if you are a buyer thinking of dabbling in remainders and wonder if it's worth the trouble, all I can say is yes, but don't dabble. Dive in head first. There are so many booksellers spending so much time, resources, and effort to do this, and they are not doing it for fun. They rely on bargain as one of the pillars supporting their business.
The best part is, you don't have to visit our warehouse to buy from us. We have way more customers who buy from our lists every day. I'll walk you through the process if you need help, but it's so easy and your customers and bottom line will thank you.
Sorry to cut this short, but I must go to the airport to pick up a customer.
This is a sight to behold and can't be appreciated without coming here and walking every aisle on both floors. And buyers do exactly that. I have harangued my customers and prospects for years about buying bargain books. Many do buy, though I (of course!) think they should buy way more. Some prospects say they are not for them, they're not worth the trouble.
Really? I had a customer last week who traveled from Nigeria to visit out little warehouse. Buyers come from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, England, Austria, Canada, Australia, India... I should also mention they come from New York, Seattle, Portland (both), Omaha, and Los Angeles. I'm just rattling off the ones I can think of off the top of my head, there are way more. These buyers are not vacationing. They are not on a bookseller's holiday. This is hard work. They work for hours and days in very cold or very hot conditions, on their feet for hours at a time.
The conversations I have with some of them can be enlightening. One, who owns 3 bookstores somewhere in the USA, said he started buying bargain about twenty years ago, but did not put them in all three stores. He gradually added them and now, in the third store, he sees a 20% sales increase because of bargain.
So if you are a buyer thinking of dabbling in remainders and wonder if it's worth the trouble, all I can say is yes, but don't dabble. Dive in head first. There are so many booksellers spending so much time, resources, and effort to do this, and they are not doing it for fun. They rely on bargain as one of the pillars supporting their business.
The best part is, you don't have to visit our warehouse to buy from us. We have way more customers who buy from our lists every day. I'll walk you through the process if you need help, but it's so easy and your customers and bottom line will thank you.
Sorry to cut this short, but I must go to the airport to pick up a customer.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Dear Author
I'm a remainder guy. Why would I be writing a post directed to authors in my bookseller oriented, remainder focused blog? Stranger still: Why are so many of the folks who read my blog, between publication dates, authors? I get a whole bunch of readers when I first publish a new post, and on that first day it's mostly booksellers, and it seems most of them are reading that new post and then going back to the business of selling books and paying their local taxes. Between post dates, however, which is usually 10 days to two weeks, my readership becomes more authors and fewer booksellers, and more of them read a lot more of the blog than the new post. All of which is to say, I know you're there! Don't get all "who me" now.
Very recently, the day before I wrote this post, I had the pleasure of working with a couple of booksellers in Book Country's massive warehouse. They spent about 7 hours there and managed to scratch a small portion of a small part of the surface and ended up with about 3000 very carefully chosen (and lovingly sold) books. One of them, toward the end of a long day of mostly standing and working hard, including the part where she continued to stand and work while she ate lunch, indicated a book she had just picked. She told me about how she had first read the book as a galley she got from another used bookstore, around the time it was published. It turned out to be excellent and she recommended it to several of her frontlist friends, booksellers who sell new books. Many of them ordered the title for their holiday season and it sold very well, going on to eventually become a best seller. There were lots of print runs and reorders and happy customers and royalties for the author.
Word of mouth recommendations are possibly the most important sales motivator for books and their authors' future works. Word of mouth among booksellers can sink or launch a new work, a new author, a new publishing venture. Booksellers are your most important friends. This is a dynamic which may have shifted recently due to e-books and other goblins, but it has shifted less than you might think and recently maybe even toward the opposite pole.
Real books are making a comeback. Even if they were not, even if "only" 50% of all book sales were real books, the marketing potential of having your physical book in the hands and on the shelves of real booksellers, not some virtual soap selling behemoth that has almost never made a profit, whose founders and employees couldn't care less about you, and whose guiding principals seem to revolve around the destruction of bookselling and any local businesses, it would still be extremely important what those real booksellers think of your work and how they feel about you. This can't be overstated.
I know that many great writers are now being published exclusively in that e-world, and have never known what it's like to have their physical books in actual bookstores or on their readers' shelves. The path of least resistance now for an up and coming author is to go first into electronic self-publishing and market from there, both to readers and to publishers. Editors, who once worked with an author's manuscript, increasingly seem to get their material from that universe, letting the works vet themselves in e-land before being given a chance in print. Lots of wonderful works are being discovered this way, though one then wonders what the editors are doing in the equation.
In my previous posts I talk a little about how, if real book sales flattened out or declined slightly in the worst of the onslaught, and e-books are selling at such huge numbers, if you do the math it means that real book sales are incredibly resilient and that a very large portion of those e-book sales are to new readers, people who were not already reading, let alone buying, real books. This has to mean that lots of those customers will start buying real books when they discover them, and this seems to be starting to happen. I think the same curve might apply to authors who only publish in an e-format. There are a lot of them, thousands and thousands, and a lot of them are very good. I know booksellers who snort at this kind of talk, but it is clearly true. Many have large followings and broad readerships. If the publishers are letting the market find authors this way, it could be one of the best up-sides of the whole industry. New readers are becoming new book buyers and new e-authors are becoming the next generation to fill bookstores and libraries with great literature.
My mother was a published author. My son has written a few novels and is trying to get them published. I tried, with absolutely no hint of success, to write a novel. I know how hard this is. I've been present, both as a child and a parent, when rejection slips or emails arrive (hence my dim view of the material residing between editors' ears). I also know how great a role booksellers play in the first steps of a book's life.
So, to the big name author who might stumble upon this blog: Booksellers have supported you for so many generations. They worked very hard to get you recognized, to bring your work to new readers, to place your books in the hands of people who will bring you more readers. This is something that cannot be communicated other than by authors and booksellers who know what I'm talking about. This goes beyond handselling or smart use of co-op advertising. These are the people who can create success for authors, and they can do it in their sleep. So, if you are standing in a beautiful bookstore, where you've been courted and wined and dined and now you are about to do your talk and sign, try to keep in mind that booksellers are pretty good at the whole social media thing, they see what you post right when you post it. Yes, I mean the bookseller standing right there... no, there, 10 feet away. The one that paid your limo fare from the airport out of his own pocket because the publisher would not pick it up. See how he is looking at his smart phone? Please wait at least until you get back to your hotel room before tweeting "or buy the e-book for $0.99 at bigncreepy.com tonight!" Just a thought.
Very recently, the day before I wrote this post, I had the pleasure of working with a couple of booksellers in Book Country's massive warehouse. They spent about 7 hours there and managed to scratch a small portion of a small part of the surface and ended up with about 3000 very carefully chosen (and lovingly sold) books. One of them, toward the end of a long day of mostly standing and working hard, including the part where she continued to stand and work while she ate lunch, indicated a book she had just picked. She told me about how she had first read the book as a galley she got from another used bookstore, around the time it was published. It turned out to be excellent and she recommended it to several of her frontlist friends, booksellers who sell new books. Many of them ordered the title for their holiday season and it sold very well, going on to eventually become a best seller. There were lots of print runs and reorders and happy customers and royalties for the author.
Word of mouth recommendations are possibly the most important sales motivator for books and their authors' future works. Word of mouth among booksellers can sink or launch a new work, a new author, a new publishing venture. Booksellers are your most important friends. This is a dynamic which may have shifted recently due to e-books and other goblins, but it has shifted less than you might think and recently maybe even toward the opposite pole.
Real books are making a comeback. Even if they were not, even if "only" 50% of all book sales were real books, the marketing potential of having your physical book in the hands and on the shelves of real booksellers, not some virtual soap selling behemoth that has almost never made a profit, whose founders and employees couldn't care less about you, and whose guiding principals seem to revolve around the destruction of bookselling and any local businesses, it would still be extremely important what those real booksellers think of your work and how they feel about you. This can't be overstated.
I know that many great writers are now being published exclusively in that e-world, and have never known what it's like to have their physical books in actual bookstores or on their readers' shelves. The path of least resistance now for an up and coming author is to go first into electronic self-publishing and market from there, both to readers and to publishers. Editors, who once worked with an author's manuscript, increasingly seem to get their material from that universe, letting the works vet themselves in e-land before being given a chance in print. Lots of wonderful works are being discovered this way, though one then wonders what the editors are doing in the equation.
In my previous posts I talk a little about how, if real book sales flattened out or declined slightly in the worst of the onslaught, and e-books are selling at such huge numbers, if you do the math it means that real book sales are incredibly resilient and that a very large portion of those e-book sales are to new readers, people who were not already reading, let alone buying, real books. This has to mean that lots of those customers will start buying real books when they discover them, and this seems to be starting to happen. I think the same curve might apply to authors who only publish in an e-format. There are a lot of them, thousands and thousands, and a lot of them are very good. I know booksellers who snort at this kind of talk, but it is clearly true. Many have large followings and broad readerships. If the publishers are letting the market find authors this way, it could be one of the best up-sides of the whole industry. New readers are becoming new book buyers and new e-authors are becoming the next generation to fill bookstores and libraries with great literature.
My mother was a published author. My son has written a few novels and is trying to get them published. I tried, with absolutely no hint of success, to write a novel. I know how hard this is. I've been present, both as a child and a parent, when rejection slips or emails arrive (hence my dim view of the material residing between editors' ears). I also know how great a role booksellers play in the first steps of a book's life.
So, to the big name author who might stumble upon this blog: Booksellers have supported you for so many generations. They worked very hard to get you recognized, to bring your work to new readers, to place your books in the hands of people who will bring you more readers. This is something that cannot be communicated other than by authors and booksellers who know what I'm talking about. This goes beyond handselling or smart use of co-op advertising. These are the people who can create success for authors, and they can do it in their sleep. So, if you are standing in a beautiful bookstore, where you've been courted and wined and dined and now you are about to do your talk and sign, try to keep in mind that booksellers are pretty good at the whole social media thing, they see what you post right when you post it. Yes, I mean the bookseller standing right there... no, there, 10 feet away. The one that paid your limo fare from the airport out of his own pocket because the publisher would not pick it up. See how he is looking at his smart phone? Please wait at least until you get back to your hotel room before tweeting "or buy the e-book for $0.99 at bigncreepy.com tonight!" Just a thought.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Told Ya So: The Sequel
I hate to say I told you so, but... well, I love to say it in this case. Back two and a half years ago, on July 25, 2012, I posted this at
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2012/07/shmatistics.html:
"Another spate of ominous statistics have been in the press lately. Again, I am struck by their repetitive and somewhat contradictory nature.
And a year earlier, more of the same with a darker slant since the rosy picture had not quite yet come into focus, and with more about the paper-mind connection:
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2011/07/thinking-and-books.html
"While the press last week focused on how the book is dead and the masses have moved on, I was thinking of my visit to a friend of my son, who needed a guinea pig in an experiment his lab was running, something about looking at how people make choices and what they do with the results. As we sat talking, I was struck by the layers of sticky-notes covering the walls and other vertical surfaces in his office, some linked by arrows pointing to others, some stuck in patterns to indicate they were part of the same idea or train of thought, while some were alone. My eyes wandered to one wall of the office, half covered by a large white board, scrawls of different hands in various colors everywhere, only where it was not also covered by sticky notes. On one end of the table where we sat across from each other there was a stack of legal pads, seemingly full of scribbles and diagrams, doodles, drawings, notes, and more stickies.
Now, back to 2015, it appears the trade press and others are realizing books, real books, are here to stay. E-book sales are dropping, real book sales are rising, the hundreds of thousands and millions of additional book readers that e-books have created (thank you so very much, e-books!) have been picking up real books and saying "Wow! These are amazing!" and going to their local bookstores and buying them and local libraries and checking them out.
When I started making this point about real books and reading almost four years ago, I thought I could express it once and be done with it, but kept coming back to it as I would see the negative press regarding real books. I felt like I had to say something on their behalf. Now I am hoping this will be it. Apologies for the rehash, but I want the positive vibe to carry forward and if my small voice can help that happen, so much the better.
The turmoil in our industry is not over and will never be over, but if your bottom line is not where it should be, if you're hanging on to your bookstore by your finger nails, please try to hang in there a bit longer. If you have had a phenomenal couple of years, but still wonder if this is some strange last hurrah, maybe instead you should wonder if it is time to expand.
Just make sure when you do to put in a lot more space for bargain!
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2012/07/shmatistics.html:
"Another spate of ominous statistics have been in the press lately. Again, I am struck by their repetitive and somewhat contradictory nature.
If hardbacks have been eclipsed by e-books, why are their numbers flat or slightly down year over year? Not much of an eclipse. If this is the case, then adding the number of readers necessary to say that they are being outsold by e-books means an awesome number of people are now reading books who were not previously doing so. Some among them will inevitably discover that actual books are better for them and they will become actual book buyers.
There are also statistics in the press (now I am thinking of Campus Marketplace, a NACS publication) which show a clear and strong preference for actual books among college age people. This is striking on so many obvious levels I won't get into it here. Suffice it to say that this group is as important to all of us booksellers as any, and they don't like e-books anywhere near as much as they like real books.
In July of 2010 Amazon said something like paper would be eclipsed by e-books by the end of 2011. Now an oddly similarly worded phrase shows up at Huffington Post. Still trying to eclipse, they're not quite convincing everybody.
Let's just keep reading our real books. The market will sort itself out."
http://benarcherbooks.blogspot.com/2011/07/thinking-and-books.html
"While the press last week focused on how the book is dead and the masses have moved on, I was thinking of my visit to a friend of my son, who needed a guinea pig in an experiment his lab was running, something about looking at how people make choices and what they do with the results. As we sat talking, I was struck by the layers of sticky-notes covering the walls and other vertical surfaces in his office, some linked by arrows pointing to others, some stuck in patterns to indicate they were part of the same idea or train of thought, while some were alone. My eyes wandered to one wall of the office, half covered by a large white board, scrawls of different hands in various colors everywhere, only where it was not also covered by sticky notes. On one end of the table where we sat across from each other there was a stack of legal pads, seemingly full of scribbles and diagrams, doodles, drawings, notes, and more stickies.
And, between each desk, desks on which sat state of the art computers, there were bookcases, some full of books. Many of these were to be expected, "The Access 2010 Bible," "Visual Guide to Excel 2007 Macros," "Visualize This," "Learning Monotouch," but then there were the occasional thriller, one cookbook, and I think I saw a complete Yeats, but maybe it was Keats.
I asked about this preponderance of paper, and after being met by a blank stare, my computer scientist interrogator said that paper is better because you can handle it. I thought about this, and later did a little reading on the subject, and it seems that there is a link between handling the language, literally putting your fingers on it, moving it about, ripping off a corner to pass to a colleague, penciling a note between paragraphs, and how well the information settles in your mind.
I have since discussed reading habits with doctors , other computer scientists, and a pharmaceutical sales rep, and have found that very few of them have embraced e-readers. They say some similar things. My doctor even said that he remembers books in the best way if he smells the pages. This was before he knew I make my living by wholesaling remainders and overstock books to booksellers and others that sell books. He just volunteered his experience.
Now, I am not deluded enough to think that my industry and livelihood are not taking a big hit from the current infatuation with e-books, and I also believe we have a long way to go before we figure out how those of us who hang on to this ancient traffic in scrolls and books will survive, but I do not believe this is being plotted out on the music industry template. There are so many people writing about this who have no knowledge of the way books have been sold for the last 500 years, and very few of us have looked at what the paper/mind connection is and what it does. Humans have been doing their thinking with paper for thousands of years, long enough to somehow be in our genes.
So maybe we will become a tiny industry, selling books to the smartest people on the planet. I'm in."
Now, back to 2015, it appears the trade press and others are realizing books, real books, are here to stay. E-book sales are dropping, real book sales are rising, the hundreds of thousands and millions of additional book readers that e-books have created (thank you so very much, e-books!) have been picking up real books and saying "Wow! These are amazing!" and going to their local bookstores and buying them and local libraries and checking them out.
When I started making this point about real books and reading almost four years ago, I thought I could express it once and be done with it, but kept coming back to it as I would see the negative press regarding real books. I felt like I had to say something on their behalf. Now I am hoping this will be it. Apologies for the rehash, but I want the positive vibe to carry forward and if my small voice can help that happen, so much the better.
The turmoil in our industry is not over and will never be over, but if your bottom line is not where it should be, if you're hanging on to your bookstore by your finger nails, please try to hang in there a bit longer. If you have had a phenomenal couple of years, but still wonder if this is some strange last hurrah, maybe instead you should wonder if it is time to expand.
Just make sure when you do to put in a lot more space for bargain!
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Back Home at the End of a Very Long Day
This last year was full of changes and adventures for me, some professional and some personal, so I'm going to try to do a bit of a wrap for 2014 and share some news while I'm at it. Probably more news than wrap, but who's counting.
Most of the booksellers I know and do business with had a very good year, some had record years. In previous quarters some attributed it to Borders' closing, or added revenue streams in internet or print-on-demand, or increasing focus on events, both in-house and off-site. The one constant I saw was the intense effort they all made on all fronts. Public relations, social media, outreach, and community involvement all played bigger parts in this increased success than in previous years. Just the sum total of so much effort by so many employees, owners, and partners over so many years seems to be culminating in the last few quarters.
All I do is sell remainders to a few (hundred) customers in this industry, but I do get to talk to lots of participants in this bookselling success story who are not involved in bargain buying, and it strikes me that all of them are so professional and hard working that a positive result is not surprising. It is because of the constant engagement in every process on every level of business by so many of these people that customer bases are increasing and readers are coming back to bookstores to buy their books.
Up until early October when I had to take a few weeks off, my sales had been going up steadily because of my customers' successes. More buyers seem to be buying across the board, rather than staying within their old comfort zones. Children's buyers have turned into general buyers, cookbook buyers are buying more nonfiction. There is more willingness to try new things. There might also be a willingness to try old things too; I've seen an odd uptick in faxes and mailed copies of orders.
My days as an independent sales rep have come to an end and I have returned to Book Country Clearing House, where I was from 2004 to 2008. It feels good to be back home, and after all this time away to see how far they've come in so many areas. I will devote my next post just to Book Country, but suffice it to say it's good to be back and I'll make sure it is good for my customers as well.
Writing this blog has been a fulfilling and unexpectedly positive experience. I have been at trade shows where someone will see my name tag and say "Oh, I read your blog and I love it!" I'm just writing about bargain bookselling, so you can imagine my surprise. I thought about how I could continue it now that I am employee, working for one wholesaler. The challenge is to keep writing about the industry and the extended family of booksellers who keep it going, while at the same time working to bring more and better business to my new employers. This was one thing I could not think through without help, so I talked to the owners, Richard and Sandy Roberts, and they both said "please keep doing what you do," so, with their blessing, I will continue. Thank you Richard and Sandy!
And thank you all for your business and support over the last year. I look forward to working with you to make 2015 even better than 2014.
Most of the booksellers I know and do business with had a very good year, some had record years. In previous quarters some attributed it to Borders' closing, or added revenue streams in internet or print-on-demand, or increasing focus on events, both in-house and off-site. The one constant I saw was the intense effort they all made on all fronts. Public relations, social media, outreach, and community involvement all played bigger parts in this increased success than in previous years. Just the sum total of so much effort by so many employees, owners, and partners over so many years seems to be culminating in the last few quarters.
All I do is sell remainders to a few (hundred) customers in this industry, but I do get to talk to lots of participants in this bookselling success story who are not involved in bargain buying, and it strikes me that all of them are so professional and hard working that a positive result is not surprising. It is because of the constant engagement in every process on every level of business by so many of these people that customer bases are increasing and readers are coming back to bookstores to buy their books.
Up until early October when I had to take a few weeks off, my sales had been going up steadily because of my customers' successes. More buyers seem to be buying across the board, rather than staying within their old comfort zones. Children's buyers have turned into general buyers, cookbook buyers are buying more nonfiction. There is more willingness to try new things. There might also be a willingness to try old things too; I've seen an odd uptick in faxes and mailed copies of orders.
My days as an independent sales rep have come to an end and I have returned to Book Country Clearing House, where I was from 2004 to 2008. It feels good to be back home, and after all this time away to see how far they've come in so many areas. I will devote my next post just to Book Country, but suffice it to say it's good to be back and I'll make sure it is good for my customers as well.
Writing this blog has been a fulfilling and unexpectedly positive experience. I have been at trade shows where someone will see my name tag and say "Oh, I read your blog and I love it!" I'm just writing about bargain bookselling, so you can imagine my surprise. I thought about how I could continue it now that I am employee, working for one wholesaler. The challenge is to keep writing about the industry and the extended family of booksellers who keep it going, while at the same time working to bring more and better business to my new employers. This was one thing I could not think through without help, so I talked to the owners, Richard and Sandy Roberts, and they both said "please keep doing what you do," so, with their blessing, I will continue. Thank you Richard and Sandy!
And thank you all for your business and support over the last year. I look forward to working with you to make 2015 even better than 2014.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Post-Pre-Trade Show Post
I'm sorry I had to miss CIROBE, even more so now that I have heard from a few vendors and customers who were there. According to vendors I heard from, the right buyers were there to make it a very busy show, with only a few tire kickers. Buyers who attended said it was quiet, which is perfect for them, and they found lots of good books to sell for the holidays and beyond.
The show was open early for the remainder wholesalers, then publishers were displaying for the last two days. One buyer told me he would not have gone if it were not for the university presses displaying for the last two days, and he was glad he did. Another buyer said she was able to break up the show into the two parts, doing what she sees as the more important work first. She stayed the entire length of the show, when in previous years she would leave early.
GABBS is coming up in Atlanta in March. They will have, through their partnership with SIBA, lectures and seminars before the show for bargain booksellers as well as all booksellers. They are located in AmericasMart and the show coincides with the Atlanta Spring Gift, Home Furnishings & Holiday Market Show, located in the same facility, which makes it an easy place to explore and buy sidelines.
Trying to convince buyers to go to trade shows is a little like trying to convince shoppers to shop independent booksellers. If a buyer who never goes, or has not gone for many years, does not see the advantages it is hard to convince that buyer without showing them. All I can say is ask the buyers that go year after year. Of course they won't want you to go because they love having a quiet show where they get all the good titles before you see them.
The show was open early for the remainder wholesalers, then publishers were displaying for the last two days. One buyer told me he would not have gone if it were not for the university presses displaying for the last two days, and he was glad he did. Another buyer said she was able to break up the show into the two parts, doing what she sees as the more important work first. She stayed the entire length of the show, when in previous years she would leave early.
GABBS is coming up in Atlanta in March. They will have, through their partnership with SIBA, lectures and seminars before the show for bargain booksellers as well as all booksellers. They are located in AmericasMart and the show coincides with the Atlanta Spring Gift, Home Furnishings & Holiday Market Show, located in the same facility, which makes it an easy place to explore and buy sidelines.
Trying to convince buyers to go to trade shows is a little like trying to convince shoppers to shop independent booksellers. If a buyer who never goes, or has not gone for many years, does not see the advantages it is hard to convince that buyer without showing them. All I can say is ask the buyers that go year after year. Of course they won't want you to go because they love having a quiet show where they get all the good titles before you see them.
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