How Being Shot in the Face Taught Me To Live Part II

Fast forward, and just recently at Big Corporate Internship, there was a promotion with Groupon to buy heavily discounted books directly from the publisher. It was a huge disaster. Arranged at the last minute, it got no promotion, and the custom website landing page was hideous and dumb. But the real loss, according to those around me was that, as some of us (myself included) expected, independent booksellers, or Indies for short, were highly offended. The intern who sits next to me and is in one of my classes didn’t get it. Well, one of his jobs is to monitor the Twitter feed. I asked what people were saying. The most recent Tweet at the time went something like “Do they even realize that they’re spitting in the face of independents everywhere?” He was a little surprised by this, but he doesn’t know the industry as I do yet.

Independent booksellers see themselves as a cultural bulwark. Arbiters of quality. They are allies of publishers in that one makes and the other promotes worthy material. Independents routinely receive discounts of 50% or more on books in addition to all sorts of free material. The book industry is also saddled with quite possibly the worst return policy of any business in the world, which involves having to frequently take back damaged hardcover as well as allowing paperbacks to be pulped on site. If you’ve ever seen the “if you bought this book without a cover, it was reported destroyed to the publisher” bit, now you know what it means. It means the publisher lost not only the sale, but the product- a product still easily saleable. Compound this with JIT (Just in Time) delivery systems which see books purchased, returned, and re-purchased before they’ve even been paid for the first time, and you can start to see how unfavorable the situation is to the producers of content (publishers) and why, as an example, author royalties tend to be based on net sales rather than SRP these days (i.e. in the past, an author would get 10% of the cover price of say, $25.00, or $2.50 per book. Today, they’d be much more likely to get 10% of whatever it was sold for, probably between $10.00 and $12.50 for a per book royalty of $1.00 –$ 1.25). Admittedly this is the case for general book retail, but independents, though often class acts individually are full of hot air collectively and they love to complain that they’re being ignored, that big chains are given unfair preferential treatment, and for that matter, that no one reads and nuts to all of you losers for not conforming to their standards.

As far as the Independents are concerned, even acknowledging, much less promoting our ability to sell books directly to consumers is a traitorous act that destroys the harmony between our businesses. And most people I work with were quick to grovel and kiss their butts and beg forgiveness because Indies still sell a fair number of books. And you know, if they sell, I'm happy to send promotional materials and whatever, but they need to get over themselves. Put their money where their mouths are and actually be those local community authorities they claim. Anyone who's interested should check out "Reluctant Capitalists" by Laura Miller, which details the growth of chain stores, Indie's incessant whining, and ultimately, their formation into a vast organization that closely mimics chains and undercuts their own explanation of why they're so important.

Regardless, I learned from getting shot at. Hide behind that gravestone all you want. Pretend the situation hasn't changed. Go ahead. They’ll get you anyway. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. There can be no greatness without audacity. Indies are scared because the digital age has reduced the need of a middle man. Online retail has already clearly proven that their superior distribution and bulk orders results in greater availability and lower prices. Falling back on a status as cultural authority- an authority publishers have historically granted the Indies purely for their own benefit- is all brick and mortar retailers have left. And let me stress that it can work if you ARE an authority, a store with a specialty, with author events and book clubs and what have you. But for the generalist bookseller, Indie or otherwise, it’s one more competitor. They act as if this makes publishers evil. Does it? We offered the people lower discounts as a one time offer than we give the stores every day of the week. And let’s face it, direct distribution, if publishers can organize it, is better for everyone. It means low prices. It means high availability. It does these things precisely because it cuts out the middle man.

This is only the beginning. Give it a few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Print runs were decimated because everything will be ordered Print on Demand from the publisher, their printer, or an online retailer (and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the agency model associated with e-books applied to POD from generalists like Amazon). The problem of returns will be gone. Books will theoretically remain “in print” forever since they will be perpetually available if you want it. Selection will be enormous. And there will still be book reviewers everywhere you look. So who wins? Consumers and producers. Who loses? Only the middleman- and only if they’re not smart enough to leverage their cultural authority.

Conventional Publishing wisdom is to protect these Indies like they were family. As for me, I say fuck ‘em. We’re never going to get anywhere by digging in and pretending the paintballs aren’t raining down. We have three choices: We, as publishers, can cower behind those gravestones like I did in the paintball course, we can run away and get shot in the back, or we can rush the mansion.
I may not know precisely which way to run, and we might not all make it, but I don’t doubt for a second that it gives us far better odds than staying resolutely in our hidey-holes.