The wonderful thing about knowing nothing is that no one has yet explained to you why something is impossible.  Thus, I have an idea.  I’d like to preface this with the disclaimer that, though I have worked in retail sales, I know nothing whatever about running specifically a bookstore.  Nor do I know anything whatever about running a publishing house.  The below idea is the result of a panel I attended at World Fantasy Con last weekend.

Publishers have a structure they use to price a book aside from the obvious cost of printing, shipping, and their overhead.  Every hardcover they print has to pay for two copies.  The one the customer buys, and the one that the bookstore didn’t sell and will return to the publisher for their money back.  Paperbacks aren’t returned in whole, rather the bookstore tears off the cover, recycles the book body, and returns the cover for a refund.  Every paperback pays for something like three others.

Independent booksellers must take advantage of the return policy because their competitors do.  The brick-and-mortar stores are already being killed by their competition because of the deep discounts being offered by larger organizations (Amazon, CostCo, Walmart, Target…)

Independent booksellers, I’m told, return far fewer books and strip far fewer books.  One of the gentlemen claimed his returns were as low as 1%.  If this is the case (and I have no reason to think he was mistaken), why can small booksellers not arrange to buy from the publisher at a steeply reduced price with the guarantee of no returns?  They can’t afford to buy at the same price as others and NOT take the return policy advantage.  Small stores in retail frequently run on a profit margin that’s positively frightening.  If they could buy at lower prices, then smaller brick-and-mortar booksellers could offer lower prices, thereby offering more reasonable competition to the large chains and the online market.  After all… at that point the publisher doesn’t have to gamble with their pricing.  They get paid, end of transaction.  With print-on-demand, publishers might even be able to print a special reduced cover price for books bought under such an agreement.

If a publisher no longer has to try to figure out the return percentages and can simply SELL the books they sell… and if the independent bookstore has a close enough finger on the pulse of their customers to keep their failed sales under a certain percentage and could cut their buying costs enough make themselves more competative… that seems to me like a good thing all around.  Also, by keeping the independents running, publishers keep their market diverse, large, and thereby safer for themselves in the long run.

I’ve never, ever heard of a bookstore that’s happy to strip books.  My friends who’ve worked in bookstores positively loathe it.  Returns aren’t much better – they take time and are a general pain in the behind.  Publishers hate returns too.  They’re likely not any happier about stripping paperbacks.  After all, we assume publishers value books.  These policies are bad for both publisher and bookstore.  They are colossally wasteful.  So… maybe by working together they could find an agreement that makes them both winners, and kills the system.  It’s past time for the strip and return system to be euthanized.

[edited for a particularly egregious spelling error.]

Tags: books, bookstores, publishing, shopping
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