Why the Collapse of Chain Bookstores is a Good Thing for Books. Part 6

Last week, we travelled from 1991 to 2010. From the fall of Crown Books to the rise of Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Through the demise of independent bookstores to the sudden appearance of the ebook. It’s 2011… Those of us still standing now face a new era. The death of Borders, the coming death of Barnes & Noble, and the power of the ebook are all things that guarantee the rebirth of print…not the death of print.

by Andrew Gifford


The Witch is Dead

Print sales, in the era of the chain stores, came to be measured in the tens of thousands, and the millions for those select few stars and big publishers. The idea of Seymour Lawrence selling a handful of copies here and there across the nation became ludicrous, even if those handfuls added up over time and translated to bestsellers and famous names.

In short, we got lazy. Publishers focused on chains and gladly wrote off the 30% or more returns as long as the chains bought a bunch of books up front. Spend the money, live large, worry about the returns and the debt later on. That’s why you hear stories that don’t make sense – like Scholastic, the US publisher of the Harry Potter books, nearly having to declare bankruptcy. Authors know that story all too well – you get your gonzo advance and spend it all because you have bills to pay and cocaine to buy, but then you don’t see another penny and the book flops and, nine months down the road, you’re living in the backseat of your Mercedes and crying yourself to sleep.

Print sales have always been about grassroots shenanigans. From writing the book, through publishing it, down to selling it, is an intimate experience for everyone involved. There’s no point in the process where the book doesn’t, somehow, enter the bloodstream. Measuring print sales, then, used to be a quiet little thing. Two copies to this store, three to that one, and ten to that one. Tra-la-la. And that’s a good day for a small press. And that should be a good day, because you know that all those copies are going to be displayed, browsed, and purchased. They aren’t camping out in a warehouse and being turned around just to fund some soulless corporate giant. Amazon, by the way, buys copies based on demand, just like most indie bookstores.

What happened that should have woken everybody up is that, as soon as the order trickled down to freeze out Borders, the average percentage of book returns per title went from 33% to 20%. And, as Barnes & Noble struggles and attempts to focus on a future with the Nook and not with their chain super-stores, that percentage goes down even more. Here in the last half of 2011, B&N has sliced all of their purchasing numbers, and I’ve seen maybe 10% returns on my titles, if that. Ten percent is the new worst-case.

We’ve reached the point where I don’t notice returns. When they do trickle in, it’s usually because they were damaged en route. Returns – formally something that felt like rape – has now been reduced to “breakage.” All because Borders and Barnes & Noble are off to the elephant graveyard.

The problem is that the few remaining indie bookstores are much like successful terrorist insurgents. They’ve sort of won the day, but it’s certainly a Pyrrhic victory. They’re limping around the ashes of their stores, missing arms and legs and eyes, shuddering from nightmares of 20 years of war. Small presses, likewise, are all sitting back and trying to take stock of what’s happened. Not just the obscene horrors of the 2000’s, but the rapidly changing world of book publishing as we move into this century’s second decade.

The question is familiar: What’s next? What’s the shape of things to come?

Ebooks will rule supreme. People love gadgets, they love the convenience. And, already, publishers are moving to make ebooks more profitable through the creation of “enhanced” ebooks. As we move through this second decade, enhanced ebooks will soon become the name of the game. You’ll not just download and read a book, you’ll be able to listen to music tied into the text, interact with maps, follow links to “bonus material” on the publisher’s website, and so on. Enhanced ebooks will also push the prices up to something more comparable to the old trade paperbacks. While, meanwhile, a “vanilla” ebook will always be available at the usual low prices. Apple’s homogenization of the ebook revolution has allowed for incredible flexibility and, in the years to come, you’ll soon be seeing multiple versions of each book. The enhanced ebook, the plain old ebook, and god knows what else. Folks juggling an endless parade of DVD special editions know the ropes.

The technology is cheap and approachable. Once small presses overcome their technophobia, ebooks will become a steady and reliable source of revenue. No returns, no inventory or warehousing worries, and fewer distributor costs.

As ebook sales throw money into our strained coffers, small presses can now take stock of how they’re doing things. The opportunities will present themselves where small presses can start piecing together little oddities once again. Chapbooks, and experimental stuff, and new authors. Small presses were, and should be, fertile seedbeds that give rise to great authors. That, alone, keeps print from dying. Print will only die if the experimental crazies die. If publishing becomes like some “current blockbusters only” industry, like ma and pop video stores did during the late 80’s and early 90’s in the face of Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and other chains. Their final holdout was to sell off all the weird shit and just try and make money with the mindless top of the charts fare. And, of course, they’ve all faded from memory.

Publishers who love this business can also breathe a sigh of relief as return percentages plummet. Not only is the money starting to make sense again, but the sales are clearly happening; and the books are again being embraced by booksellers and the audience. Indie bookstores were eclipsed, but now their importance is starting to become clear once again.

Above all, small presses and indie bookstores must learn to get along again, to form that united front. Because these glory days will not last. There will be new enemies, if only in the form of the big name publishers swooping in to gobble up whatever they can. Bookselling, and the making of books, should, once again, return to an intimate and pure path. No more pyramids of fad books at the entrance, no more usury, no more back-channeling.

It is a time to celebrate, but it’s also time to form a union, stronger than ever before. Small presses and indie bookstores should never again be enemies. And, together, we can move into this new era and re-establish a beachhead that’s been lost, piece by piece, since the late 1970’s. People will always buy books, no matter how bad it gets. The big publishers have to worry about the bottom line, and so they’re forced to play to the lowest common denominator. The small presses, however, are free. Most readers are hungry for change, for excitement, for new things, for experimentation. It is just as likely, and just as welcome, to put out some offbeat bizarre book in 2012 and have it raise the freak flag from here to Timbuktu as if it was, once again, the 1960’s or 70’s when houses like Black Sparrow and Graywolf and others were cutting their teeth.

Reintroducing the Wild West days of bookselling should be on all of our minds. Controlled, and tailored to accommodate modern needs, but it’ll be a breath of fresh air for everyone. The readers will come, and they’ll fork over their hard-earned money. And they’ll continue to do it both on their Kindle and at the cash register, virtual or otherwise. The trick is, simply, drawing them in. That’s not done with a shotgun blast in a dark room, or a million dollar PR person, or a pile of books at the door. It’s done with creativity, with a product that’s worth something, and with a little bit of devotion and TLC on the part of the people who love this industry: The gunfighters who run bookstores, and small presses, and believe that we’re doing something very beautiful, and very necessary.

Now’s the time, kids. Now’s when we need to get together and talk. If we miss yet another window because we’re all paranoid, isolationist screwballs who can’t get our shit together, then we will die.

On Self-Publishing, E-books, and Politics and Prose

Our guest today is Shawn Orenstein. Later on this blog, in a few weeks perhaps, we'll deal with the issue of self-publishing head on. It's a touchy subject to some, but, for what it's worth, it's one that deserves some attention from writers. Because, as you can see here, a lot of people are self-publishing. Here's Shawn's bi-weekly column on what's happening in the world of books & publishing:

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Garrison Keillor’s response to self-publishing, which was far from positive. In some ways, I agreed with him. While I see the benefits of self-publishing in that you do not have to bother going to a big-time publisher and most likely get your work turned down, I also did not understand how people would promote themselves while there are thousands of other unknown writers trying to the same thing. This past week, however, I stumbled upon two self-publishing success stories.

One was the story of M.J. Rose, the author of the best-selling Reincarnationist series and the founder of Authorbuzz.com, a marketing company for authors. On the homepage of her website, a question pops up: “How can I promote my book directly to hundreds of thousands of reads and to thousands of bookclubs, booksellers and librarians?” She comforts the aspiring writer responding, “Every author asks that question. The answer is AuthorBuzz.” 

Rose started to self-publish in 1998; she was one of the first people to use the Internet to publish a book. She started by making her own website and attaching a word document and selling it for $9.99. After a short time, it became painfully clear that her work was going nowhere. She decided to print the novel herself and take it around to various bookstores. Most bookstores refused to even look at her self-published book. Eventually, after serious self-promotion, she caught the attention of The Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club and soon enough she had a book deal.

Now the author of eleven novels, Rose tries to help aspiring writers publish their books. Having gone through all the struggles of self-publishing, Rose is confidant that she can guide writers lost in the dark. She has been in the book-writing business for twelve years and she has a background in advertising. Through these experiences, she remains skeptical about self-publishing. Last year, there were over one million books published and about three quarters were self-published. Rose says that it should be hard to get to the top in the world of books. She says, “You are going to have to break through, but if you want to make a career out of this then you have to make sure you are doing it in a very professional way.” She bluntly says, “if it is really easy to write a book in self-publishing, you are doing it wrong.” To listen to the story, find it here.

           
The other story I found was from a different perspective, one that started in the 21^st century. Before Boyd Morrison got published, he went through the process of self-publishing an e-book. However, unlike many self-publishers, this was not his first approach. He started by going through twenty-five publishers, all of which turned down his thriller novel, The Ark. At first he was going to build his own Web site, intending to allow people to download it for free. However, he discovered that Amazon gave the opportunity to unpublished authors to sell their manuscripts to the Kindle store and give them a segment of the proceeds. Morrison’s expectations were low, desperately trying to market by selling his books for less than two dollars. However, through word of mouth, his book became a hot topic of discussion on boards such as Kindleboards and Mobileread. The popularity of his novel, eventually rising to the top of the Kindle stores technothriller bestseller list, finally got the attention of Touchstone books, a division of Simon & Schuster. The Ark was one of the first self-published books that started on Kindle and eventually climbed the ladder to a big name publisher. Find the full story here.

Politics & Prose, the iconic independent bookstore in Washington DC, announced what long-time, dedicated customers have feared: it's now up for sale. Despite the threat to the independent bookstore industry, Barbra Meade, the co-owner, reported, “there are no financial problems here. We make a good Profit.” In fact, their sales have jumped over this past year. Two years ago, Politics and Prose sold 141,000 hardcover books for $3 million. This past year, the store sold 156,000 for $3.3 million. According to The Washington Post article covering the story, book sales nationwide have fallen nearly 2 percent from 2008 to last year. However, Michael Norris an industry analyst for Simba Information, said that he predicts that independent bookstore may survive because of the relationship they have with the community. He said simply, "I think they will survive because it’s Politics and Prose.” Since it first opened, Politics and Prose has formed a strong, loyal following and became a popular stop for authors on book tour. While they have held ex-presidents and Nobel laureates, the store also makes an effort to present less-known local authors.

Jeffery Mayersohn, a retired tech company executive and new owner of Harvard Bookstore (not associated with the university), responded to the news: “I believe all these devices are here with us to stay. But I also believe physical books will coexist with digital books for a very long time.” 

 

Going on in Publishing

I'd like to start a semi-new feature on this blog. The idea: troll the Internet for interesting trends or factoids about the publishing industry, the writing biz, etc. Stuff that writers should know. The kind of stuff I like to tweet on The Writer's Center's Twitter account. Collecting all this data is my great new summer intern, Shawn Orenstein. Here she's cobbled everything together for you. Obviously there's a lot more out there. Anyway, I'm done. Here's Shawn....

Last week, Garrison Keillor proclaimed that book publishing “is about to slide into the sea.” He sardonically wrote about the benefits of self-publishing, “… if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a website. And if you want to write a book, just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are a blood relative.” Keillor failed to understand the benefit that self-publishers see: not having to deal with the gatekeepers in the publishing industry, who have been appointed to determine who is worthy to get into print and who is not.

His words can be found here.

Keillor obviously did not take his argument far enough. Apple now has a mechanism to self-publish through them without the need for a non-threatening middleman like Lulu and defiantly not an agent or a deal with a real publishing house. Apple clearly has their own ideas for the eBook market and the company refuses to ignore any options within that market, including self-publishing authors. Here are the new 7 easy steps to 21st century publishing:

1. Write a book.

2. Use an Intel-based Mac running on OS X 10.5 (or later edition).

3. Alter your book into an ePub format.

4. Get a 13 digit ISBN number, which could take about two weeks.

5. Get an iTunes store account and enter your credit card number.

6. Make sure you have a US Tax ID.

7. Set your price.

And there you have it. You’re a published author! To learn more, go here.

In other news of previously thriving industries such as printed books, small book stores continue to be threatened by the Internet. However, they have been grabbing hold to Amazon for help. Professor Sandeep Krishnamurthy from the University of Washington, who specializes in e-commerce, reported that "Amazon really started off with the idea that they’d do all the selling. Then they realized they were not profitable—they were growing too fast and losing money on every product they sold…. They realized it was not about the company selling to one set of customers, it was about creating a marketplace. … They’ve been in the business of enabling local companies." Small bookstores seem to have accepted the power of Amazon. These sellers have allowed Amazon to sell their goods directly to Amazon customers, simultaneously losing some of their potential profits.

Unfortunately, Amazon can only do so much for these sellers that are trying to keep in the bookselling business, especially since Amazon is trying to promote the Kindle, which pops up immediately when you open the Amazon page, gently reminding those that love printed books that it is the “#1 BEST SELLING PRODUCT ON AMAZON.”

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading business division, reported confidently that E-Books will take over print within the next five years. He said: “Within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content. Three years ago, I said within ten years but I realized that was wrong—it’s within five."

Shawn Orenstein is an intern at The Writer’s Center.