And the book biz changes…step by step. Ultimately the folding of bricks and mortar mega-stores is, imho, likely to continue, ultimately leaving the indies who deal in used and new and used; the online sellers who ship; and the e-books. And the pirates.
What this also does is mean 30% of Borders’ buying is now lost to publishers, who are hurting with every such event, and ultimately to writers, who are hurting right along with them; and the bankruptcy means whatever Borders owes publishers and other vendors across the board won’t get paid. Neither will the writers, of course.
Interesting times, my friends. I got a check the other day that is only 10% of what that check used to be. A 90% pay cut is pretty steep, let us tell you.
And now we’ve got a myth floating the internet that out of print means public domain. The pirates are flourishing on that supposition. They’re encouraging readers to scan and offer up out of print favorites…when almost all backlist is out of print, because of the publishing crisis.
How nice!
I remember when the mega-stores were driving the indies and small chains out of business — and certain elements of the public thought this was good business, for a plethora of reasons. Now the big stores are collapsing under their own weight. Will the small stores return, like the mammals who survived, where the dinosaurs failed? One can only hope. We used to have several secondhand and indie bookstores here, but the coming of B&N and Borders caused most of them to fold, and I was sad.
borders closed in the UK at least a year ago. I think ….. yes, November 2009
present state of affairs
Current
* Blackwell’s
* Waterstone’s
* W H Smith
Defunct
* Ottakar’s (bought out by HMV, rebranded as Waterstone’s)
* Dillons (all stores were rebranded as Waterstone’s)
* Books Etc (now owned by Borders)
* Borders (went into Administration in November 2009)
* John Menzies
not a lot of choice! son in law still working at waterstones – when they took over Ottakar’s they downgraded waterstone’s staff contract. its not so much fun working in a bookstore these days … there are indie bookshops – we have one in our local little market town, so we are lucky. but I am BAD, I buy from amazon all the time.
CJ – 90% pay cut – eeeeek! that’s really bad.
I was in the record business on the production side-engineer and producer-for many years and all I can say is welcome to my world. Many of the artists I know would have been happy with a 90% pay cut. In many cases it was 99%. Some are giving the product-their recordings-away and asking the “buyers” to send in what they can.
And the large retail record stores-Tower, San Goody, etc-are long gone.
But small stores can flourish but offering what the net or large stores can’t-service. I’m a book buyer and I try to buy locally but I am almost stopped by the lack of knowledge of the staffs. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone into Borders or B&N on Monday, asked about a book reviewed in the NY Times on Sunday and gotten a blank stare. We still have some small stores here-I live in North Oakland hard by Berkeley-and I do buy there but sometimes there is no alternative to Amazon.
If the publishers have not studied the decline and fall of the record business and learned from their mistakes-and I don’t think they have-they’re dead. The Closed Circle represents one way to circumvent the problems of the digital age and I pray it makes a commercial success.
Phil Brown
waterstones really should be proud of it’s staff, they are all very knowledgeable and really into books, and usually will be able to locate what people want straight away (daughter and son in law met working there – a matter of pride to be able to find what people want, even when they don’t know the title or the author! but sadly waterstones is owned by a big rubbish company which really does NOT care ..
As the owner of one of those small independent bookstores, I can relate very much to the pain of your latest check. (Royalty statement, I presume?)Right now, I am trending about 40% down for the year, and nearly 70% down for this month so far. I don’t carry used books, but one of Omaha’s best used bookstores is selling out their stock at half price because the store is closing. I talked to the owner, and he said it was strictly a lack of sales decision. Jeff’s been in business two years longer than me.
Every month when I put together my newsletter, I am struck by the dwindling number of new titles in my field (mystery) and sf. And so much of what is availlable in sf is media-based — SW, ST, StarGate — or D&D. So far, at least, mysteries are not quite so far gone down that road, although we seem to be heading there.
I think a lot of my sales fall-off is caused by Kindle and the other e-readers. A Lot of my customers are older and find the type in regular books hard to read. People can regulate the type size with the e-readers.
But why your sales should drop so precipitously is beyond me. I know that a lot of readers are going to the library more because of the economy, but sf readers are usually much more likely to purchase a personal copy of a book — and then hold on to it til death do them part.
well, and this one (it is royalties) represents about 15% of the annual income. I hope the others fare better. I did, for the record, finally and for the very first time actually get a check noted as coming from e-sales on Amazon. Nothing from the others I know offer same. But one of the most maddening things is the refusal of these companies to account in any meaningful way: I suspect they’re lumping all titles by a given publisher together, which only puts my books and Sam Smith’s lesser-selling books on the same level, with a purely mathematical division. No one’s ever admitted it, but I’m suspicious. If the figures given can’t readily broken down by the publishers, then how do the publishers accurately pay the writers, whose pay is based on units sold of their particular title?
According to its bankruptcy filings, Borders’ largest unsecured creditors are its publishers. Often debtors ask the bankruptcy court to permit them to pay those of their vendors without whom they can’t operate, in a motion filed very soon after teh case is filed. No such motion has yet hit the docket in the Borders case, and it may in fact be difficult for it to try to pay the publishers because there are so many and they are owed so much.
Penguin PUtnam: $41 mm
Hachette: $37mm
Simon & Schuster: $34 mm
Random House: $33 mm
Harper Collins: $26
McMillan:
I remember fondly Dalton’s and Waldenbooks, here in the US. They were favorites for my parents and me, back in the 70’s particularly. Mom or Dad would take me in, I’d make a beeline for the SF&F section, and there would be a new (to me) title for a cheap price I could afford with my allowance. That was back when paperbacks were less than $2. Those were the days! I remember too, one Christmas season, when there on display was this wonderful, attractive, coffee table book…Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance. Over the years, I wore the cover off that book, and it’s still cherished.
Nostalgia aside, I just saw that Finity’s End, like other long paperbacks, is now on for $25, and a plain vanilla Spanish textbook, hardbound, is now…over $100. Yikes. No wonder bookstores are losing business to ebooks, and no wonder readers (customers) are buying less. By comparison, my grocery bill this week, not counting Rx refills, was around $140 for two people, and I buy less these days.
But it sincerely aggravates me. I’d say most visitors to this blog *love* books; are heavy readers. When I’ve been in Barnes & Noble lately, I’ve been overwhelmed at the sheer number of books, and searching (with less keen eyesight) for new titles, favorite authors, and the real benefit of a bookstore, the unexpected surprise find, bought because the cover and blurb look interesting, the chance to find a brand-new, as-yet-unknown (to the reader) book or author, a possible new favorite. The ability to easily browse through a book or its index, to see if it will be a good buy before buying, is still a strength of a real bookstore, along with (generally) a knowledgeable, helpful, friendly bookworm of a manager or store employee, part librarian, part info scientist, part salesman, part bookloving friend, who’ll help you find a book you want, or similar, or order it in… online stores still do not easily provide these. (Amazon keeps improving. To my taste, B&N lags behind Amazon somewhat.)
I just hope that smaller stores, especially the indies and mom-and-pop stores and used bookstores, can survive and gain the ground the big giant warehouse chains are losing. — I do think, though, that business owners (any business) and media (such as books) stores are going to have to find a way into the online digital marketplace in order to grow or survive.
Closed Circle is one important answer to that, authors (artists) promoting and selling their own work direct to the buying public. The trouble there, it seems to me, is how an individual author or a group of authors banded together (as with Closed Circle) can extend their marketing/advertising and publicity reach to get to the interested buyers (fans, previous readers/customers, and potential new fans) to expand their sales and their readership base. — Newsletters, author readings/signings, and the plain fact that readers will find a bookstore and patronize it, have been the driving forces, more so than what few ads there are, even from the big chains.
This really isn’t unique to books. Musicians (bands), filmmakers and actors, and artists generally are struggling with the same issues. I saw my parents and their friendly competitors struggle with it in the art and framing business back when big stores like Michael’s came in, too. Record stores? Oh man… I’m not aware of one any more. I’d need to look for music / audio equipment stores. (Even Fry’s and Best Buy and Wal-Mart and others have less in CD’s and DVD’s lately.)
What does it mean for someone like me, who has small-time print-media experience, typesetting and graphics and editing and early desktop publishing, and now web skills (but not yet PHP)? It means the industry is changing drastically for us too. Back when I started, my mom and I were akin to heretics for doing print-media design work and paste-up on the computer instead of a light table, when possible. Never mind the typesetting equipment was simply a higher resolution and bigger, bulkier computer, hah. Nowadays, computer-based design is the industry norm. Yet we’re facing the rapid change into an increasingly digital and multiple media display world, and the shrinkage of physical media outlets for produced print media, any entertainment media. It’s an upheaval akin to a tsunami or earthquake.
What does it mean for readers, fans, …arts patrons? It means we in the buying public likewise have to scramble to find the art we want to read, listen to, watch, experience.
Yes, absolutely, artists and producers will find (or create) new ways to get through the new world that’s emerging. But in the meantime, the issue is riding out the storm, not just surviving, but finding the way to grow, to change, to change completely how we do things, to gain new skills, processes, and outlets.
I absolutely sympathize with the authors and the bookstore owners and the publishing industry folks, who never have been wealthy, and who are feeling their way (our way) into the new mode of doing things…as it emerges.
I sympathize with the readers, the audience, the buying public too. There must be a way that all these sides can find a new, beneficial way of doing things. It looks like it’s gonna be a wild ride, riding out the storm. Keep your head down, but keep looking forward. 🙂 Don’t ever give up. Change, instead. (I keep telling myself this too. Is it working yet? :p 😉 )
“If the figures given can’t readily broken down by the publishers, then how do the publishers accurately pay the writers, whose pay is based on units sold of their particular title?”
From my end, I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that the authors have been fighting tooth and nail with their publishers for years and years to get royalty statements that bear even a passing resemblance to reality. I also know that writers have been fighting tooth and nail over electronic rights which up until about ten years or so back were not even mentioned in the standard book contracts, which gave the publishers license to do whatever they darn well pleased without paying the author a cent. (But I’m sure you know a heck of a lot more about these contract matters than I do.)
As to Amazon’s accounting practices, you might want to ask your agent to go nose-to-nose with Penguin’s accounting department to verify if your suspicions about Amazon lumping payments to Penguin into a single sum. This sounds to me like something the major writers unions need to pursue. That’s how authors got rights to electronic publishing.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be above suspecting Penguin of pulling a fast one either. You probably remember the big fight the American Booksellers Association had with the major houses about ten-twelve years back over unfair discounts to the chains. Penguin appeared to be fairly clean until it bought Dutton. During the “due diligence” phase of the merger, the outside accountants discovered that yes indeed Penguin had been giving an under-the-table special discount to the major chains.
It seems to me to be inexcusable/insupportable for the publishers to claim ignorance of the breakdown of books sold, when each purchase is scanned in, and automatic inventory control software keeps track of what to order, and those orders ripple up the chain to the publishers. Nobody can be that incompetent unwittingly….
This is the industry (Ace) which for years claimed not to know the number of books it printed, so it reckoned authors’ returns (stripped books, which are charged against the author’s payment) at 40% of some figure they sorta figured they might have printed—but remember they had no idea what that figure was from the other column, and the 40% was only their best guess. By the time the authors forced an audit, they certainly had no clue how many books they’d printed or sold, or had returned, because they hadn’t kept any records.
THIS is the way the industry has done business in the past, and the numbers are so closely held one department doesn’t inform another. Probably even the publisher honestly had no clue, since they weren’t interested in knowing.
If you wonder why the industry is in trouble now—couple this with the resistence to using computers at all.
BlueCatShip: My daughter is taking a masters level class in something she needs to get a promotion. The textbook (yes, just one textbook) was $400. I just about passed out cold when she told me that.
I’ve been fighting with the publishers for years to get them to quit pegging the price of books to the price of lunch in Manhattan. In too many cases, the book industry seems to think that all intelligent life ceases at the Hudson River.
My sales reps tell me that the publishers claim that they cannot make a profit from the sale of mass market paperbacks, but they can from the sale of the trade paperbacks. The figure that was tossed at me was that they only have to sell one third as many copies of trade as they do mass market to make a profit. But now the publishers have introduced the “premium” sized mass market paperbacks costing $9.99. The rationale is that the print is larger so that we older readers have a less difficult time reading the book. Yes, people will buy the “premium” sized paperback if it’s by a favorite author, but overall they’ll buy fewer books in order to make up for the higher price of the “premium” paperback, so all the publisher is doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Some days, it’s not worth chewing through the restraints.
WOW! And I thought my art history books were outrageous twenty years ago. No wonder Barnes and Noble has a rental program!
Although, by the examples of my local Borders and B&N, I think Borders was a disaster waiting to happen, I hate seeing yet another book store go under.
The Dallas Texas area has one store fighting the trend. A new indie bookstore, called “A Real Bookstore” opened recently in a shopping center near (as Texans consider the term) where I live. The site was originally to have been a Borders. It appears that the indie took that site as the footprint is about what you’d expect for one of their stores. I’ve visited the store only a couple of times. It seems nice but a little generic. I intend to give them some of my business and hope for the best.
I work for a newspaper. We’ve been dealing with massive changes in the way people get their news (now called “content”). It’s another industry that is fast becoming obsolete, and it’s pretty darn scary when you’re not old enough to retire, but considered “too old” to start over somewhere else. I thought the major bookstores were still pretty safe, but I guess not. That’s pretty scary, too.
Houston is fortunate to have a major paper still, but the Chronicle’s web presence is big now too, and the print edition is less than half uts former size, with lots of, “See chron.com” at the end. Article quality is not as strong in real journalism; more human interest. One of the local TV news stations now advertises their iPhone/iPsd app and website. They’re adjusting.
Silverglass, I’m in much the same boat, and I want very much for the newspapers to survive as real news sources, real reporting of substance.
The CBS Evening News had an article about Borders and the publishing industry overall. Very worth checking. Their reporter had a sourced prediction that, iirc, in about two years’ time, ebooks will account for over 50% of book sales. They claimed Amazon has reported ebook sales have eclipsed hardbound sales and are at or near eclipsing paperback sales.
Strange days indeed, mama, strange days indeed.
I buy mostly ebooks only these days. It has almost completely replaced paperbacks for me now. I get the mainstream stuff directly from Amazon, but I’ve bought a ton from Baen this year too (over ten books this month since I needed reading material for a long train ride) which was an easy process and of course directly from the author should it be available.
For favorite authors I still buy hardback though. I doubt I’ll ever shake the collector aspect of that as long as the option is there for me. I’m also in my 20s and buy vinyl so maybe that is the stubborn hipster in me. Hardbacks are to vinyl as paperbacks are to VHS. One just makes more sense than the other. Don’t see many people pining over the qualities of VHS.
I am likely going to move states in a few months and I am already shooting my bookshelves the evil eye. I am so tired of lugging the majority of them around. Wish I could swap most of them out for ebooks.
We’re beginning to downsize somewhat. I still buy paperbacks for some authors (never did buy hardbacks) but generally I’m using the library and buying ebooks.
I find hardbacks just too heavy and too greedy for space. but I don’t like having to wait for them! the one thing I like about the kindle is how comfortable a reading experience it is. that’s because I am a baby boomer and I have arthritis, and I get very fed up with paperback pages refusing to stay open. the one thing I don’t like is how GREY it is! a little depressing, I think. of course, I love books as objects, but my preference would be for a small hardback, beautifully made, which would be extremely expensive, but the sort of thing victorian publishers produced. today’s hardbacks are usually not that nice, paper seems cheap, construction basic ….
Ugh, I mean I don’t like having to wait for the paperback to come out!
I do wonder if e.g. Amazon/publishers are doing an ASCAP-type thing — paying based on what they think the percentages of the overall sales are, rather than actually accounting for things. But with much less justification; it’s impossible for ASCAP to get an accurate record of what’s played in places that buy blanket performance rights, but Amazon knows exactly what they sell and make.
See my answer to J Crow, above: that’s EXACTLY how things used to be done, and reform came rather late.
“I did, for the record, finally and for the very first time actually get a check noted as coming from e-sales on Amazon. Nothing from the others I know offer same.”
Does this mean that when I buy your books as ebook from Barnes and Noble for my Nook you don’t get paid for my purchase?
I like have things in ebook – I already own these titles, mostly in hardcover, but I can carry ebooks around more easily. I recently re-read the Fortress series in ebook format – probably would not have done that if I had to carry paper books around for days and days. I’m also trying to limit the number of books in the house, so things I’m fairly sure I won’t re-read I buy as ebooks when they are available. A lot of my reading is older titles or backlist, so paper books are still a big part of my life. I have trouble buying these books in local bookstores – backlist even if still in print does not make it on their shelves. They often get one or two copies of the sort of book that gets NYT reviews, and in this college town those sell quickly and are not replaced. It appears publishers and bookstores want me to by popular ‘women’s fiction’ or books with zombie in the title, or that ‘The Girl Who’ series. That’s all I am ever offered easily
I’m at least getting no notification of it that I have yet deciphered. These payments are often from some middleman, such as Amazon payments being from something like Seattle Books.