Small is growing more beautiful by the minute

If you believe what you read in the gossip media, my days as a publisher are numbered; conventional publishing is on the way out, eBooks and digital short print runs are the way the future lies.

 

Then again, the same information source has been predicting the demise of novel for a while too, not to mention the independent bookshop, of which I can think of more than a few, Robin’s Aunt Agatha’s included, that are still alive, well and attracting customers. So I’m not rolling over just yet.

 

All the same, I’m not sure whether to be concerned or to indulge in a tiny bit of that German thing, what’s it called, oh, that’s it, schadenfreude, when I read about Borders US laying off staff and Barnes & Noble’s share prices plummeting. I know I should wail and lament if any bookshop at all shows signs of weakening, but forgive me if I smile just a little when I discover that the big guys are finally discovering the hard way that they may have got it wrong.

 

I’m on fairly safe ground in the US, because our lovely, small-but-perfectly-formed American distributors don’t go down the big bookshop chains route. Here in the UK they – or rather it, there now being only one significant chain since Borders UK bit the dust – are/is not quite so easy to avoid, but I often wish we could, all the same.

 

Not all the time. Sometimes they do us proud; most Saturdays through the summer one or other Crème de la Crime author is usually chatting to customers in the crime section of a local branch, and sales of their books for that day are more often than not in serious double figures. But that’s thanks to the author for putting the hours in – all the shop had to do was order the stock and put up a few posters, which we supply.

 

My main quarrel with them is returns. That’s why I’m glad we don’t do much business with American chains; they have a nasty habit of ordering by the thousand and sending nine hundred back three months later – and that is not an exaggeration. (And don’t get me started on the archaic travesty that is the sale or return system.) Here in the UK the numbers aren’t quite so stupid, but it still happens, especially when a book is chosen for a promotion. Once the promotion period is up, if they misjudged how many they’d sell, it’s the publisher who takes the hit – and don’t forget that chain bookshop promotions cost the publisher serious money up front, whether or not a single book is sold. Suffice to say we’ve been bitten a couple of times and won’t be putting a hand near the shark’s teeth again.

 

Independent bookshops, on the other hand… Sensible size orders, a sympathetic approach to local authors and a practical one to promotion. And if they haven’t got what you want, they’ll get it in 48 hours, since they don’t have to negotiate a complicated system decreed by people in a far-off head office who have never asked real customers who buy real books how they’d like things to work.

 

Though it’s a struggle for many, it does seem to be the little guys who are coming through at the moment, while the big ones flounder. You’d think they’d take a leaf out of, ahem, the little booksellers’ book: forget chasing the next big thing, listen to the customers, make sure the staff are well-informed, and don’t order it unless you’re pretty sure you can sell it.

 

What’s so hard about that?

Comments

[michael]

The one question I have for today's small publisher is why not e-books? I am not saying abandon the print version, but you have spent all that money developing that print book, so why not put it out in an additional format that has few costs involved?

Don't you want my money too? I want to support small press and new authors, but for several reasons I prefer e-books. So why do book people think it is print vs e-book? Why resist a format that will sell you more books and attract new readers?

[Lynne Patrick]

Michael I'd be DELIGHTED take your money. I may be a Luddite but I live in the real world; five of our titles are already available as eBooks and four more will be out by the end of the year. Every small publisher I know is keen to find a way to make eBooks work - though I think you're underestimating the additional costs.

[michael]

What titles and where can I buy them? Did find several Jeffrey Cohen titles at Kindle. I have read "It Happened One Knife" so I bought "For Whom the Minivan Rolls" to try his other series.

And thank you for your answer. Most of the discussions I have read about the e-book assumes the cost is cheap. I would be interested in reading the hard facts from the point of view of the small publisher.

[Christina Auret]

I do not much like chain stores when it comes to buying books. I do support them, but I make a 100km drive at least one a month to my favorite book store where the owner can usually be found in the shop.

There is something to be said for a store that can get you a copy of a random book that none of the chain stores stock. Especially when you did not ask them to get you the book.

I mentioned once in passing that I can't find a certain book anywhere. The next time I was in the store they just happened to have a copy.

[Lynne Patrick]

They should be available on Amazon for Kindle, under the imprint eCC. Try Working Girls, the first in Maureen Carter's Bev Morriss series.

[Lynne Patrick]

That's exactly the kind of service I mean, Christina. I don't understand why chain stores find it so hard.

[Robin Agnew]

OK, I'm biased but I once went in a chain store and asked where their Laurie King books were and the clerk said "Who?" Yikes. My other favorite story is a customer in a kid's section of a chain asking for a kids book with a hedgehog. The clerk assiduously researched "hedgehog" on the computer, instead of walking the customer over to the Beatrix Potter or Jan Brett books. The clerk told the customer instead that there was no such thing as a kid's book with a hedgehog in it. You're right, Lynn, sometimes it is simple.