"Books Don't Spoil"

[Mickey330]

I found this interesting blog post by Dean Wesley Smith:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=1742

His premise is that the big publishing houses treat new books as perishable produce (with the required press to "sell now" before expiration) - while the reader knows books are not perishable and want to get the book at their leisure ... or when they want it.

Just a very good discussion on publishing.

Marilyn

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The idea of getting rid of merchandise once the initial rush of sales has faded to make room for what will hopefully be the next product with a rush of sales pervades the entire retail industry. Modern retailers don't give the north end of a southbound furry rodent about the needs of their consumers. All they care about are quick profits. It's called greed.

[queentess]

This part was interesting:

Everything they do, their deadlines, their sales force, their printing schedules, their promotion, their warehousing, everything is set to having a book hit suddenly and then vanish, to be replaced by another and another and another.

This is called the “churn” in the publishing business.

It’s this “churn” of one book after another that makes a publisher money in the margin. It is how every single aspect of their companies are set up. Their business model is set on the churn.

Now comes electronic publishing and reading into this mix and churn doesn’t work. Books don’t spoil. But traditional publishers can’t imagine a business model without the churn, so for the longest time, traditional publishers have fought to do one of two things.

1) Keep the books they are publishing out of electronic versions to preserve the value of their more expensive hardbacks.

2) Delay or price very high the electronic books to also not compete against their hardbacks.

In essence, they have been treating electronic books just like their paper produce books. And that thinking is just flat wrong, which is why so many smart people are saying that traditional publishing is in trouble.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

The idea of getting rid of merchandise once the initial rush of sales has faded to make room for what will hopefully be the next product with a rush of sales pervades the entire retail industry. Modern retailers don't give the north end of a southbound furry rodent about the needs of their consumers. All they care about are quick profits. It's called greed.

Profits are how a business remains in business -- it's not greed, it's what enables them to pay their employees and keep their shareholders and investors happy. And if they don't have the newest latest book, their competitor will, and then they've lost business. And since physical bookstore only have a finite amount of space, it makes sense that they carry what sells. It's all quite logical.

BUT. I get so frustrated when I walk into a bookstore and can't find a book. I mostly read scifi, and the scifi section of my local bookstores are incredibly small. Nearly every time I go in there, I'm told "well, we can order that for you"... no thanks. I'll just order from Amazon and have it shipped directly to my house. And if I do that, it's just as likely to be a used book, so the publisher still isn't making money off me.

I think Print on Demand (POD) services could really change this. No, I don't want you to order the book for me, but yeah, I'll browse for 15 minutes more while I wait on my book to be printed. Back catalogs would always be available, and they don't need to worry about shelf space.

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

...don't give the north end of a southbound furry rodent...

That was awesome! Please note that this will be plagiarized

As for the article, the very fact that an entire library full of books can now be stored on a single server is in fact a huge step forward in my opinion. Not to mention that these "missing" profits they are so worried about are money they were taking out of my pocket! No sympathy from me on that one...

[foreverjuly]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

That was awesome! Please note that this will be plagiarized

As for the article, the very fact that an entire library full of books can now be stored on a single server is in fact a huge step forward in my opinion. Not to mention that these "missing" profits they are so worried about are money they were taking out of my pocket! No sympathy from me on that one...

Seconded. That was a great line!

Part of what they are missing is that no matter how well they promote a book, they can't get it to everyone who'll want it in that initial month. But patience certainly isn't a virtue retail has in stock either.

[abookreader]

I like the part where he compares the large publishing houses to the mega-cruise ships - simply unable to turn quickly. While the smaller more nimble boats around them are pretty much poised to rush in and meet the needs of the customers.

There has been more than one huge dinosaur of business go under because of their inability to change inline with their customer demands.

[Elfwreck]

Wonderful article.

It doesn't mention one of the reasons publishers churn through books--US tax law changes a few years ago made it incredibly impractical to keep a backlog. They're now taxed on unsold books in storage, so the policy shifted from "keep a few flats of mid-list books so that if one turns unexpectedly popular, we've got it covered" to "print less so we can be sure to sell it *all* right away; if it turns out trendy, maybe we'll reprint."

That's not the cause of the trend, but it exacerbated an already troublesome set of business practices.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that the shelves in the bookstores only hold so much. But a shop online that sells eBooks has virtually unlimited storage for eBooks to be sold. That alone can make eBooks more valuable. And eBooks should never go out of print even though we know they do.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is that the shelves in the bookstores only hold so much. But a shop online that sells eBooks has virtually unlimited storage for eBooks to be sold. That alone can make eBooks more valuable. And eBooks should never go out of print even though we know they do.

Harlequin ebooks go unavailable at the same speed the paper versions go out of print. Like comic books, they're expected to be fungible; nobody's supposed to care about any particular one. They expect three types of customers--those who want them all & would like to get each new one as it's released; those who want one occasionally, at random, with the belief that this month's is interchangeable with last month's, and entirely new customers who will hopefully turn into one of the other two types after getting a taste.