Future Good or Future Bad?

  We see this morning in a Publisher's Weekly report that Macmillan will be joining forces with Ingram for the printing and distribution of backlist books 'with a tail'. We're not exactly sure what the 'tail' bit means but we assume it means authors' older titles that sell occasionally but are not worth the time and money to keep in stock by Macmillan. Until this move, such titles would go out of print.

We're seeing this more and more. The idea is that the books become Print-On-Demand titles. They're not manufactured until they are ordered by us or another bookseller or library or whomever. The good part of this is that no one has to warehouse them or pay taxes on them (we and the publishers pay income tax on the stock we hold at the end of the year, which is one reason books go out of print so quickly). The bad part is that they're much, much more expensive than the traditionally printed book. It is a system full of pitfalls and landmines.

When books are changed editions, they're suppposed to have new ISBNs. That's how we order from the wholesalers - by the ISBN. That helps us know that the book is a different book. But, with the new POD replacement, they've been keeping the OLD ISBN. We think we're ording the book we've been stocking but we get something else entirely. Something we don't want and can't sell.

Two recent examples:

 We needed to reorder David Rosenfelt's Sudden Death. This was a regular 'ol mass market paperback, $7.99 from Warner. (Warner no longer exists as a publisher - it is now Hachette). But at some point, the book was switched to this POD system. What arrived was a trade paperback edition priced at $20.99 AND with a much lower discount. So now the book is far more expensive to put on the shelf and nearly impossible to sell at that price.

Leslie Silbert's Intelligencer is a book that Fran sells (guess I should say 'sold) continually. It is a dual-time thriller, set in the past and the present, a private eye story and a bibliomystery. Since 2005 when it came out as a $14 trade paperback from Simon & Schuster, we sold 82 copies. Now it is a POD from Ingram priced at $22.99.

We'll no longer be stocking these titles.

As far as we know, there is no alert system to say what titles have been moved to POD. To find out, we'd have to look up every book in the Ingram website to see what its price is. That's not a realistic way to do things for this little shop. Maybe a larger outfit with someone dedicated to doing just the ordering could do it. Doesn't work like that here and I imagine it doesn't work like that for many small independents.

With Macmillan (and keep in mind that encompases St. Martin's, Farrar/Strauss, Walker, Picador, Minotaur, Griffin, just to name a few) hooking up with this POD system, it's likely that these books will similarly escalate in price to the point where it isn't financially feasible to stock them. That means you, the reader, lose out on mass-affordable books, the author loses out on sales, and our stock becomes a tiny bit more narrow. That means that there are now three major publishing houses working this way and there is no reason to believe this will be it. That means more and more books will be available solely through one one supplier (and concentration of availability is not necessarily good when it comes to broad choice or long-term stability or the theoretical monetary benefits to the consumer of the capitalistic 'competition of the marketplace' system).

So that is the question: books that would normally be out of print will be available for people to buy - but will they be affordable and will they sell at the prices being asked?

Yet to be determined...

Comments

[Thom Chambliss]

Excellent analysis. I especially appreciate the specific examples, which provide immediate rebuttal to those who would deny your argument. Combine this concern with the one about the probable increase in prices for printed books brought on by reduced print runs caused by eBooks, and you reveal a huge issue about easy access to affordable books in our culture. Will we price ourselves out of easy access to new ideas?

[Michael Walsh]

One minor nitpick: it's "Publishers Weekly" not "Publisher's Weekly".

[George V. Reilly]

This seems like another factor which will push customers towards ebooks, which is also bad for the small bookstores.

Is there any way for the small bookstores to get a piece of the ebook pie for mainstream books?

[supra shoes]

I love you post!!