Wow! Really? Books-A-Million, according to a tiring blog concerning B&N and Amazon fighting over exclusivity rights (more or less) let this little statistic out of the bag. And OH MY what an eye-opener as far as the publishing industry and the fate of Brick and Mortar stores goes.
Books-A-Million is the second largest chain bookstore and they don't sell anything but "returned from the bookstore" books? Meaning that if you're a smart publisher and you make your books non-returnable according to that "industry" standard return policy designed by large publishers for large publishers back in the depression, you can't get your books into a BAM.
Go google it people. It's easy to find. Each and every one of BAM's distributors (three at last count) only sell those books that are sent in mass to other Chain Bookstores so that the large publisher who sent them can make the NYT best sellers list. Then over 75% of them (that's actually my statistic) are "SOLD" to second hand distributors. A smaller publisher will only go under if they play that "industry" standard return policy game because small publishers who have to deal with distributors such as Ingram's Lightning Source or Bookmasters don't even get the option to get their "returned from the bookstore" books back (nor any of the money if those books are sold to "returned from the bookstore" dealers.) Small publishers are told those books are destroyed in most instances. And still they have to give the money back to the book store that returned it, should that bookstore ever purchase a few copies in the first place. I know, right?
BookMaster's is actually supposed to put the "returned" book back into the publisher's inventory but clearly doesn't since at least 20 copies of Forever Richard showed up in my Local BAM!!! This means BookMasters made a little "something, something" on the side, leaving both my publisher at the time and myself scratching our head. How nice!
But there ya go folks!!! The second largest chain bookstore in the Nation is a used bookstore and can't even carry books by the "smart" publishers because "smart" publishers make their books non-returnable to keep from going under.
And for the record, I've tried to get BAM to order my books but they can't because BAM's "returned from the bookstore" distributors don't have any . . . obviously.
FYI: BAM is not a used bookstore. They only sell new books. There is an offshoot in their company called Second & Charles that sells used books.
ReplyDeleteAwww, I didn't see this comment until now. Nope. BAM is a used bookstore. All of their books are hurt or "returned-from-the-bookstore" books. And, well, that's a fact. Unless "used" books are defined differently, that's what they sell. Doesn't matter if it never came out of the box, if it's a returned from the bookstore book, it's used and not new. It's misleading to say otherwise so I won't.
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