I am heading into Rehab, starting today. I am going cold turkey. Yes. I am shutting the door on discounted books. What? I am not going to shop at the BIG DISCOUNT online booksellers anymore. Not at all. Ever. Gasp! Okay. Are you freaking out? Gulp. You might hate this post. I will understand if you do. Quick! Click away and come back tomorrow! NO hard feelings. I am still going to write it, though. It’s important.
Reasons to hate this post
- You love books
- You don’t live near a bookstore
- You love cheap books
- You are on a budget
- You love books
- You support people who write books
- You support independent booksellers
- You don’t support monopolies (unless it involves many board games)
I feel like I need to get this off my chest… I totally understand that you might not agree or care about this stuff. And I totally get that, I really do. But this is how it is for me…
SO. At the moment we are not selling our book in our shop. We were selling it, but to be honest I feel like a bit of a charlatan selling my book for the recommended retail, when I KNOW you can get it for nearly half that elsewhere. (Did I hear you scampering off to google ‘Pip’s book cheap quick’?) I like to share good tips and make sure that I am being fair and upfront. So I feel really really weird making you pay full whack for my book when you can buy it from one of the big discounters way cheaper. I feel like I am cheating you. What the heck? How can that be right?! How can an author selling their own book at the RRP be cheating. Well… it’s not, of course, but it FEELS like that to me…. I am sensitive. I want you to be happy and get a good deal and have plenty of money to buy cake and things.
I spoke to another author about this the other day. He said that his book is LESS THAN WHOLESALE through some of the book discounting sites. This means that if he buys his own book direct from his publisher, he will pay MORE for that book than YOU would if you bought it online from the book discounters. And he WROTE the book (along with another rad gal). He says he too feels weird selling his book at the RRP via his own website. Even if it is signed. Still feels weird. Hmm.
Let’s dig a bit deeper. For me it works like this (it may work differently for other authors) ::
ME :: I buy the book at wholesale through my publisher at half the cover price. And then I mark it up 100%. And then I sell it to you. Simple. In that case I get a royalty on the book from said publisher (a modest percentage of the cover price paid twice yearly) PLUS I get the margin I added to the wholesale price (through my store cash register!)
THEM :: The book discounters buy the book for half the cover price (or maybe a titch less, perhaps? volume discount?) and then they add as little as a dollar or two to the price and sell it to you. Simple. (Of course I still get my royalty on this book too.) They are happy with a tiny margin on top of the wholesale price… and then they will even ship it to you for free.. somehow… how can that even work? I don’t know, but that is how they do it. And you probably like that a lot! I used to! Cheap books! Hurrah!
What is the problem? Well… I guess the book discounters have big plans for world domination and will have a monopoly before we know it…. Do you think? They are building a big powerful business. And the book discounters are relying on you to go and peek at all the books you want at your local bookstore and then hot foot it back to the computer to buy it for half price plus a dollar or two. (That is a bit uncool, if you do that. Please try not to do that.) They are pretty happy that they don’t have to actually TALK to you or pay expensive shop rent or make a nice window display of lovely books or bother with author signings or any of that pesky stuff either.
How is this discounting sustainable? I do not know. I know that it is not sustainable for smaller booksellers. And what this means in the long term I do not know. (See how much I don’t know! It’s all very confusing!) Will the big discounters crush everyone and then push the price of books back up to regular old retail? Or will they be bought out by another giant company and make their money then… and prices of books will ultimately return to the RRP? I am not an expert on this stuff. All I know is that when authors feel like robbers selling their own books (because they can’t compete with the big discounters and they don’t want to ‘dupe’ their readers/customers into paying the RRP) than something is very wrong…. And when small stores are acting as unwitting showcases for big huge book discounters then something is very wrong.
Yes, I think there are lots of ways I can make it nicer to buy my book direct from me, even if it does cost you an extra $20 or so. I can sign your book. I can have a chat with you. I can tuck a little map of Fitzroy’s best shops into the cover while we talk about crochet and you peep about the shop. Those are all good things to do. And maybe they will make you want to pay the RRP and buy from me. BUT I know that this economy means lots of people HAVE to cut back. I totally get that. I really do. A chat is probably not worth an extra $20, no matter how delightful. And my messy writing DEFINITELY is not worth $20! I really do understand that.
So. Bearing in mind the budget and the bank balance, all I would ask is that you think about what you buy book-wise and where to buy it. Think about the survival of small booksellers, (and also know that probably A LOT OF AUTHORS feel weird about selling their own books at the (very fair) RRP now.) And have a think about whether this matters to you, and who you want to support in this whole schmozzle.
So. My rehab starts today. I am not buying any more discounted books. (I have bought around 20 books from the book discounters previously.) I am going to buy fewer books (at the RRP) from independent booksellers. And I am going to hatch a plan to make the books I will sell in my store in the future more special : including some extra bits and pieces tucked into the cover which you can’t get if you buy from the big guys.
Maybe you know a lot more about this than I do? Tell us what you know in the comments!
Maybe you have something to say about this important issue? Do do do tell!
Please note : this entire post is written from my own point of view. It’s probably not very objective…!
xx Pip
Under the terms of our contract I'm not allowed to sell my own book for less than the RRP even though the large discounters do.
It gets even more tricky when independents can buy the book wholesale direct from me at a cheaper rate than they can from the publisher.
I've never bought a book , or anything else from a discounter mainly because I choose to support Australian businesses. Even if they are not directly aussie they are at least employing Aussies and their money contributes to our economy.
I wish people would consider that point when choosing to buy OS, that money never comes back. The little they save buying from a discounter is nothing compared to how much we lose.
hello lovely Pip.
I, once again, am a few days late in reading your post but felt I had to comment anyway! I dont know how these things work in other countries, but I wanted to let you into a secret that I learnt when I worked for a small chain of bookstores.
We sold mostly rrp books, but every now and then the owner would buy a pallet of books from publishers distributers, to sell at discount in order to bring people into the store. These pallets were filled with books, that were then bought at a price definately alot lower than the wholesale. The reason these pallets of stock were available was that some large chains were allowed to buy their books on a sale or return basis, the books would be in the stores for a pre-determined period of time and then the ones which hadnt sold would be returned by the chain, who would then place a new order and the cycle would continue. Sounds Fair right, exatly the way you would think it would work? The problem with this, is once the books are de-boxed, to put on sale or often even just to send out to individual stores in the chain, they become secondhand when they are returned to the distributers. The companies will not take them back even though they are most likely re-ordering the same books. This means that discouters can buy pallets of books for often much much less than the wholesale, thats how they make their money.
I hope this makes sense.
Molly
wow. I did not know that. That is crazy. Thank you Molly!
I am with BookGirl on this – who are the retailers who get 50% off the RRP for books?? At our store we get a scant 35% off the price of books, including your lovely books. I could actually buy them cheaper than wholesale from overseas and get a better margin in our shop, but I choose to support our fab book rep from Hardie Grant. As it happens, your books sell very well for us, because we have great customers. On a personal level I always buy my books locally unless they are very obscure titles.
As far as other wholesale products go I also agree with Elle that retailers do NOT always need to apply a 100% mark-up + GST. It shouldn't be a fixed rule. At Lark, we apply 100% to goods from larger manufacturers, but we support emerging makers by only marking up a small amount, sometimes only 30-40%, to give them a 'leg-up' as you mention, and also because it benefits our store to have their amazing and beautifully made things even if the margin is lower.
Getting back to books, buying locally also supports the Australian book industry, which I worked in for many years. Believe me, it makes a huge difference, and allows Australian writers to have a voice.
**stands up and applauds**
Thank you for this post. I am a journalist and writer and I've seen strange things happen over the last few years. It's hardly possible anymore to sell articles at a decent price! Publishers do know how much time you spend on researching and writing, but they have to sell the magazine or book at a very low price… and that's a problem, for me and all the other journos out there. On the one hand I think it's great that because of the discounters people are picking up books more and more, but making a living out of it is getting more difficult every day. I do encourage people to buy magazines and books from everywhere (as it's better to buy from a discount place that not at all…) and hope that the market will pick up at some point.
Have a good weekend.
Esther (http://happyinred.blogspot.com)
Thanks for your comments, it makes me feel a lot better actually. I guess I just didn't know enough about what happens at the other end, and I felt like it was a lot of work for little return. But you are right, those stores are showcasing our product, and I guess they are probably not getting heaps out of it themselves!
Also, the world absolutely DOES need shops like yours! (Not that I've ever been, but I would LOVE to…). They make the world a much MUCH better place.
AW Elle! It is such a tricky thing, isn't it?! Ultimately I think that crafters should sell directly, and there should be no middle man. I think that way the crafters can up the prices on their products a bit, and get even more fairly paid. And the consumer can meet the person that made the thing they are buying, and learn a bit more about it/them! xx