Actually make that rant of the year. I don’t think I’ve had one yet in 2009, and this is a biggie.
Returns. Sale-or-return. In fact, the way (almost) the whole damn book trade is organised. No offence, Robin, I know you didn’t invent the system.
But will someone please tell me who did? Who on earth had the bright idea that books, pretty well uniquely among all items which exist in a retail environment, should be sent back whence they came if they were still on the shelves after three months, with a full refund of whatever the bookseller paid for them? OK, not unique unique; I expect there are some things I don’t know about. One I do know about is newspapers, but I can see a modicum of sense in that, since they’re dead in the water after twenty-four hours. But books? It’s not as if they go out of date. Well, give or take the occasional rush-to-be-first when a celebrity dies. What's with the special treatment for one small part of the retail sector?
The same principle applies to returns as to my other pet rant, chain bookshops’ marketing fees. It’s a little over two years since I ranted about that, and needless to say it didn’t have the smallest effect. But nothing ever changes if nobody suggests that change might be needed.
What? Oh, the principle. My varied and chequered career has included a couple of forays into retailing. And as far as I could see, the basic tenet on which the system is built is this: retailer looks at the available products, makes an educated guess about what customers will want to buy, orders stock accordingly and takes various steps to make it look attractive so that potential buyers will buy it from him/her rather than the similar shop down the street. There’s a certain amount of bargaining and negotiation with suppliers to ensure everyone gets a deal they can live with, but mostly it’s the retailer’s job to make sure s/he gets it right, not the supplier’s job either to take back any overstocks or make it worth the retailer’s while to make the stuff look attractive. And if it turns out that retailer has misjudged, s/he puts it down to experience and doesn’t stock that product or that quantity again.
The point is, it’s a risk. A gamble. Less so in some areas than others; there will always be customers for food and some kinds of clothing, and the more sophisticated a society becomes, the more products are deemed ‘essentials’ and the fewer ‘luxuries’ – though for purposes of this rant, let’s not even get into where books fall on the essential/luxury continuum. And I could digress for hours about the way shopping has become a favourite hobby and designer outlets and out-of-town shopping centres are taking over the world, but for once I’ll resist.
In the book trade the risk element simply doesn’t exist. The retailer can order whatever titles he/she takes a fancy to, safe in the knowledge that standard trade practice allows those titles to go back to the publisher (or wholesaler or distributor) for a full refund if they don’t fly off the shelves. Ask the perfectly logical question why books and so few other products? and the answer is a blank look and that’s how it’s always been. Which is really no answer at all.
I’ve often found that digging around the history and origins of strange or anomalous quirks of behaviour reveals a certain logic at a certain point in time. For instance, I once heard of an order of nuns based in northern Europe who always wear thick cloaks to celebrate mass – which made perfect sense a hundred years ago, when churches weren’t heated, and has now become part of their tradition, even though they swelter in the central heating. No doubt someone will be able to tell me how it came about that the book trade danced to a different tune from the rest of the retail sector.
But why, exactly, is it still the case? It doesn’t make sense any more. Booksellers need publishers every bit as much as publishers need booksellers; it would be hard to find a more symbiotic relationship. The sale-or-return system skews the balance of power a long way in the bookseller’s favour, and it’s small publishers, the ones who take a flier on something fresh and original and need to sell the print run to break even, who suffer as a result. The big ones with budgets for a cushion of celebrity biographies, cookbooks, TV tie-ins, whatever’s ‘sexy’ this year, simply factor the returns into their annual costings.
The problem, of course, is that that is how it’s always been. Sale-or-return is part of the structure of the book trade, and such a huge change in that structure would have to be managed with immense care and skill to keep the entire system from imploding.
But see above: change doesn’t happen unless someone suggests it’s needed.
So I’m suggesting it’s needed.
OK. Someone tell me I’m wrong. And why.
