We've had a number of loyal customers ask, with concern in the voice and eyes, if we're 'doing alight'.
Yes, we're doing alright.
Clearly, the overall economic strife is hitting us all in one way or another. In downtown Seattle, there have been massive lay-offs. That has meant some customers have needed to cancel standing orders or scale back on their buying. In some cases, what brought them into downtown Seattle was their job and now, without that job at the end of a long commute, they don't travel into town anymore or as often. We try to remind them that we are here on weekends and parking is free on Sundays, but the combination of a longer trek in and less disposable income is a deterrent.
Our sales were down 10% in 2008 compared to the year before and that was spread over the year, not just from December. (The snow last month was just as big a problem as the economy - maybe more so.)We wondered, going into the Holiday season if our gift certificate sales would be affected. Unlike so much of the retail world, our best sales period is during the Spring/Summer/Fall tourist season. What we sell well in December are our shop gift certificates. Given the economy, would we sell the same number, would they be for as much per certificate, more but for lower amounts?
What happened the first half of the month was a surprise: we sold exactly the same number of gift certificates between Dec. 1st and 15th as in 2007, but for much higher amounts. In 2007, we sold just one $100 gift certificate; in 2008, we sold seven. Why? Our guess is that some people are still doing quite well financially and, wanting to help out friends who are not, they chose to give them larger gift certificates. Friends may not accept cash as a gift but who won't accept a nice gift certificate? Its a thoughtful way to help out a friend who likes to read but doesn't really have the income to fund their habit.
What about from the 15th on? Too screwed up by the snow to know. We had days that were shortened by the need to try to get home, days where every media outlet broadcast the recommendation for everyone to stay home and one Sunday where we decided to just not open. So there is no way to compare the last half of Dec 2008 to the end of Dec 2007.
2009 has been good so far - all seven days of it - but our sales are shaped by signings and, so far, those have not been affected. We now have signings scheduled into April and have eight authors scheduled in February alone. So far, it appears that the signed copy aspect of sales isn't taking a hit.
What isn't so clear is what may be happening with unsigned copies, whether they're hardcovers or trade paperbacks or good-old mass markets. Publishers continue to release books that cost more and more. A $24.95 hardcover is, any more, a cheap deal. It isn't odd to have $26 or $27 hardcovers. Trade paperbacks cost anywhere from $14.95 to $17.95 most of the time. The $5.99 mass market paperback appears to be extinct. Most, these days, are $6.99 - perhaps endangered - or $7.99. Then there are the abominations called 'premium paperbacks' that cost $9.99. Most books seem to be priced to be discounted, whether at the drug store or membership warehouse. In some cases, we could buy books at a Costco or Sam's for less than the publisher charges. It is a screwy system.
We keep hearing that the major publishers are having more and more trouble financially. Like eveyone and all busineses, the major publishers are being slammed around. It doesn't help that most major publishers are huge conglomerates that focus on the bottom line. The focus is on return on investment, not publishing books that will stand the test of time. To achieve that, they've raised the prices on their books so high that they're in danger of pricing themselves out of the range of the average reader. The point of the mass market paperback, after all, was that it was affordable to a mass market of customers.
We've been asked if people are buying fewer books. Hard to say yet. Will they buy fewer books overall or go for fewer hardcovers and stick to paperbacks or look only for used books? Too soon to tell. It doesn't take an economics degree to understand that if a buyer has a limited budget, they can buy more books the lower the price of each of them. One $27 hardcover or three $7.99 paperbacks? Two $15.95 trade paperbacks or four $7.99 mass markets? Common sense says that we will be selling more lower priced books, and that our used book business should increase. We'll just have to see if common sense is accurate.
We hope and think that there will be a psychological boost to the country when the new President is sworn in. Whatever economic stimulous package comes soon afterward should also be a mood-booster, besides being a healthy shot of money into the system, so, for now, we may just be in the 'hold-on' phase.
But, in the end, books are another aspect of the 'entertainment' economy. The higher the ticket price, whether to a baseball game or a first-run movie or a new hardcover, the more people have to think about whether laying out the money is worth it. If tickets to a ballgame are too high, you stay home and watch it on the tube. If it is too expensive to go to a movie, you wait to rent it or for it to come onto cable. If a new hardcover is out of your price range you can put your name on the list at the library or wait for the paperback. There are always alternatives to the high costs of entertainment. Publishers do not seem to grasp that. The contracts given to authors can be as out-of-scale as those given to pitchers or movie stars. And, really, in our consumer-driven economy, do you want to drive prices out of the range of the mass audience? Makes no sense to do that, but they are.
Still, when you buy a book, you can read it again and again, which can't be said for a first-run movie in a theater or a ball game at the park.
Are we doing ok? Yes. Thanks to loyal customers and loyal authors - friends all - we're doing fine.
Happy New Year to us all and godspeed Barak Obama and the people he's putting into position.
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