Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin
If so, B&N will come out ahead, too. Cuz the only what that happens is if S&S books just don't sell. Seems unlikely.
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The current business model for B&M retail (everybody!) is to order as many books as you think *might* sell if all goes perfectly and the thing becomes a big success. And then, after 3 months, the stock is reduced to a few weeks worth of sales and the rest returned to the publisher.
All the estimates I've seen say that the average return rate on anything this side of Harry Potter is 50%. So if B&N cuts their orders from S&S by anything less than 50% S&S gets less returns and B&N gets to sell exactly the same number of books. (B&N sees no change in income but S&S comes ahead: same income, less returns to be remaindered.)
If B&N is doing this to flex ther retail muscle and "punish" S&S for not agreeing to their terms for "stocking charges" (aka, payola), they first need to reduce their orders by over 50% of their typical order for similar books, at which point B&N would be selling less S&S content and *if* B&N were the *only* way those books could get to consumers, *then* S&S would share equally in the "pain".
But in a world where people who walk into a B&N and fail to find a book they want just shrug and order it online (assuming they didn't go to Costco first), reducing the volume of books ordered is like a lashing with wet noodles; a lot of noise but no pain. ("I'm going to hold my breath until I die!")
For B&N to really get S&S's attention they would have to boycott *all* their books. Which is what Amazon does under similar conditions, bad-press be damned: You either go eyeball-to-eyeball or cave in.
Half-measures aren't going to get you anywhere.