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Note: facts suggest that Christian chain bookstores are going under for a completely different reason than the one given here since they weren't around during the depression. I may blog about that later.
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As with anything, there are many opinions out there but I tend to gravitate to finding the facts. Not that it will keep things from happening the way they're happening but at least, armed with the facts, I can help others understand should they want to.
Many businesses seem to be failing in light of the internet or the ability for others to provide something digitally and quicker than the brick-and-mortar store. And while I'll agree with this theory in part I do not feel it is the primary reason for the demise of larger bookstores.
Does it matter what I think? No, not really but if you read on you'll at least know why I feel the way I do and perhaps you'll sleep better tonight.
Here's an excerpt I've posted before from an article I link to quite frequently. Since it is in an on-line encyclopedia it is unbiased and can't readily be pulled or changed due to my linking to it. I only point this out because many articles I find on the internet now lead to dead links having been moved all together. While I say that I'm not worried about this link going anywhere, I've copied it none-the-less. It has valuable information in it. Here's the link and here's the excerpt:
"The Great Depression of the 1930s hit the book publishing industry as hard as it hit every other sector of the American economy. Booksellers at that time were mostly small local businesses, and to help them survive the economic hardships of the depression, Simon and Schuster invented a system allowing booksellers to return unsold copies of books for credit against future purchases."
(Warning long sentence coming up. Read with caution.) I typically use the above excerpt to point to the reason why once-smaller-now-larger bookstores don't give a poop about small pubbed authors while pointing out that it is this return policy that bites small press in the butt so that they have to make books non-returnable just to keep once-smaller-now-larger bookstores from taking them down which as a result keeps once-smaller-now-larger bookstores from ordering small press books because they can't return them whenever they darn well please causing small press to eat the print cost of their book because AS WE ALL KNOW, no POD publisher wants to pay for shipping of the returned-from-the-bookstore books to be sent back to them. (long sentence over.)
Today I will use the excerpt to point to a much different issue. If large publishers cared so much back in the depression that one of them, Simon & Schuster and subsequently the others for sheer survival--broke protocol and created a return policy that would help the bookstore more than the publisher, then why aren't they acting today? These are THEIR bookstores. The same ones from the depression.
Where is the call to arms? I don't see it? The larger chain bookstores of today are the once-small bookstores of yeasteryear. Where are these wonderfully gracious publishers?
Many still point to ebooks as being the demise of the brick-and-mortar bookstores. I say "nay-nay." I say that if larger chain bookstores embraced and worked with small press (afterall there are more of us than them) the same way they work with larger publishers or at least offer us something as lucrative, they most likely wouldn't be in the shape they're in today.
I'm certain that large publishers (starting with Simon & Shuster) meant well by offering the hang-by-the-neck-until-dead (for small press anyway) return policy but after reading the above excerpt, one has to wonder at their motive. Okay, maybe not everyone but I certainly do.
Small press publishers might help but it's difficult to do this when the door is shut and locked to their presence. I'll not mention the insults that are heaped upon small press when they actually attempt to ask for the type of agreement larger bookstores share with larger publishers. Ooops.
I hate to see this happen as I hate to see any large entity go down but it's their own fault . . . in my opinion.
Oh and since small press books are swatted down at every turn, here's the best place to go to find Black Bed Sheet Books recently published edition of Never Ceese
Buy Never Ceese here!
Hey, if I didn't tell you, how would you know?
Sue tells it 'like it is'...many great books are being neglected over so much bias that is promoted as "Christian." Many books that are put into that market are so watered down and ineffective that is is not worthy to be read. The large book stores flood the market with the "same old-same old" authors that have lost their edge. New authors, and people that are "still hungry" often write a better premise that needs to be read. None of these are "rubber-stamped" books that are clones of some earlier success. I am not against someone who is established as an author, rather they have often become complacent in their writing and their attitudes. Sue has often been on the mark as stating what needs to be said. If these large 'brick and mortar' bookstores listened more to some blogs such as these, then they would know what the general public really thinks! These aren't a bunch of "yes men" that tells them what they want to hear, but state what they really need to know.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Joe L. Blevins
Author of a few books...
Still the same, Sue...it's a valuable read and people need to know (and by 'people' I mean everyone from the larger house publishers, to the bookstores to the author - experienced and just starting out) that when the chain bookstores continue to cut the legs off the small-press and Indie published authors, they will eventually find themselves out of a job.
ReplyDeleteNo one can resist change forever and while it's been a long-time coming and probably will still be a while before it happens, one day it will and what then?
A lot of people are going to rue the fact they are left behind.