Shelf Awareness ran two articles in its daily electronic newsletter that I found disturbing, and very likely linked.
The first concerned the bestseller price war that is going on between Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. The second concerned the precarious near future of Seattle's largest independent bookseller, Elliott Bay Book Company. The problem with bestseller hardcover books selling for less than $10 each (when most of them have cover prices between $25 and $35 each) is that independent booksellers cannot compete. Publishers and book distributors don't offer the same discounts to the independents that they do to bulk retailers and the major book chains. What these same publishers may not realize (or perhaps they don't care) is that they are pricing themselves out of business. A good percentage of their sales come from their backlist titles. Bestsellers are essentially a loss leader that gets people in the door of bookstores to look at other books. If customers stop shopping at independents and they go under because their sales are gone, then there are fewer places to shop for books. Once we are left with one or two big non-bookstore chains (that don't carry any backlist titles) and maybe one big bookstore chain (because Borders is on its way to its own demise), you and I won't have a place to pick up the latest novel by Steve Erickson or Alta Ifland or Rebecca Brown or Anne Carson. You and I will only have the latest Dan Brown and Danielle Steele to choose from, and that would be a shame.
The major publishers and book distributors had better wake up and put some pressure on large chains, especially of the non-book variety (Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Target, Costco), to once again reasonably price their books. The survival of the same publishers and book distributors will be at stake if and when they actually kill off their vehicles (actual bookstores) for getting their backlist into the hands of their readers.
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Support your independent bookstore. Support your independent publisher. Buy local and buy direct!
1 comment:
How about throwing Kindle into the mix?
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