You Get What You Pay For

We posted this on the Seattle Mystery Bookshop blog, but I think it's important and bears repeating, so here it is. 

Yesterday was one of those dispiriting days when customers you thought were good and loyal let you know that books they ordered in advance they'd already bought somewhere else. 

We put a lot of time and effort into letting people know what is coming out. We do that to promote, in advance, what we'll have and to gather orders for those titles so that we know how many to copies to order, and, frankly, to lock in those sales in advance. There is nothing easy about being a small independent bookshop, so we work into the future to gather sales to come. Like any small business, cash flow is the life blood of this business. We have to have continual  sales coming in to make it possible to pay the invoices, the payroll - the bills. 

These early orders - what we call 'reserves' and what NYC calls 'pre-sales' - also help us decide how many copies to order. After all, if you know you have reserves for 5 copies of a book to come, you also know that you should order a couple of extras for stock - for the shelves for those who come in to browse or ask for it later. If many of those reserves are not bought, we're not only left with unsold stock but with no cash coming in to pay for them. When the cash doesn't flow, you get news stories like we've been seeing in Seattle where two long-standing bookshops are in trouble: Elliott Bay, the large general bookshop that is often cited as the model that Barnes & Noble copied for their superstores, has gotten itself into a financial pit and may have to move out of Pioneer Square if it is to survive; another, smaller general bookshop, Bailey/Coy, will be closing at the end of this month. Both cite the crash in sales as the major problem.

Where have the sales gone? It isn't just e-books.  Most folks have probably gone on-line or to the Big Box stores, some to the membership warehouses and some to the lack of disposable income in this 'post-recession' economy. There is always a massive out-pouring of tears and fears when such news stories come out, but no one should be surprised by it. Too many loyal customers have stopped being loyal. It's just so easy to shop from home. Absolutely it is! Who can argue with that? Not us. But that choice is not without a cost of its own.  Any time someone orders on-line from a huge, corporate entity it takes a sale away from a independent bookshop or record store or any other kind of small, local business. 

Yes, it is convenient to sit in your sweatpants and slippers while your dog snores on the couch and order a book or a CD from Amazon, but, if you do, you cannot be shocked or saddened by that local/corner business closing. You may convince yourself that it is only one book here or one disc there, after all, you're just one person and how can your actions, your choices hurt anyone else's business? But it isn't just about you. It is about hundreds or thousands of yous: 10 of you ordering a new hardcover from Amazon or B&N instead of Bailey/Coy meant that they were not getting that $250 in cash flow. 20 of you picking up that hardcover at Costco or Sam's means you each individually save $10 or so on that book, but that means Elliott Bay didn't get that $500 in cash flow. Deciding not to wait to get those two trade paperbacks from us means you got to read them much earlier, but that means we have two copies sitting on the shelf unsold and holding up cash flow and we don't have the cash from the sale of them. Asking us to track a list of authors and to let you know when their new books come in but then not waiting to support that work means we wasted a lot of time and ordered copies we don't need and we don't have the cash from their sales. Two trade paperbacks to her seems small and two hardcovers  for him feels small but that means we lost out on about $100 in sales to you two yesterday. How many of those easy decisions by how many people before they're writing a story about us? 

Cash ceases to flow not only when sales dry up, but also when cash is locked into unsold stock. Ordering copies that you decide to not buy after all means that cash is tied up in those copies and isn't in the checkbook to pay off a bill. You can damage a small business in any number of ways but a sure way is to ask them to get something for you and then to not buy it. The worst, of course, is to give your money to a huge corporation.

So if you're shocked that Bailey/Coy is closing or if you're worried that Elliott Bay is in trouble AND you regularly buy books from Amazon or B&N or Costco or Target, you're part of the problem. Bailey/Coy is closing and Elliott Bay is in trouble because so many people spent their money elsewhere instead of with them. If you appreciate small businesses like Bailey/Coy or Elliott Bay or us, you have to make an effort to support them. If you don't, they can - and do - go away. Here in Seattle, we're seeing that play out before our eyes. If you like the variety and uniqueness of the independent businesses, you have to buy from them. If you don't they will disappear. Then you really will be left with just the predictable blandness of the corporate warehouse where everything looks and feels the same, where only what sells the most is represented, where only the bestsellers are showcased, where depth and variety are viewed as not cost-effective and risky, and where the people who staff them are mere clerks who don't are if they're selling you hotdog buns or paperbacks. If you don't care, if you're happy shopping for books in an interchangeable warehouse where all the shelves are the same color, the next aisle has car batteries and the previous screen had bbq grills, where the menu at the side of the monitor lets you click over to washing machines or catfood, buy all means do nothing. 

 

And you can't complain when your favorite mid-list authors are no longer published.  The big stores won't carry them, and when the small bookshops who stock a wide variety are gone, you won't find them.

But if that is not how you want to buy your books, do something about it, dammit. Vote with your pocketbook. 

You get what you pay for.

It was never so true.

Comments

[Deanna]

Amen and Amen.

[Dina]

Fran, I thought about your post, and wanted to make some thoughtful comments. I agree that small, independent businesses are very important, and have a more and more difficult time making it in this world of big-box stores and mega chains with "buying power." And, I must admit, I buy at Sam's and Walmart, where I can afford to shop. I mostly buy books at the used bookstore. I'm not all caught up with my reading, and can find lots I haven't read there.

That being said, I would absolutely love to come shop at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. I would love to buy there, too. But, I'm far away, alas.

I'm no business expert, but these are changing times, and businesses must change with them. If your local customer base is shrinking with the disposable income, then you need to reach out to more people. How do you do that? With the internet, of course. I'm not suggesting that you become the next Amazon.com. You should take what it is you have over Amazon, and those other mega stores, the variety - the speciality - and the expertise, not to mention the love for what you are selling, and use those things to reach and sell to that broader market. SMB already has a web presence. Expand it. It won't take more shop space to do it, either. Yes, shopping is changing. Yes, we absolutely need specialty stores of all kinds, but you can't just complain about the changes, or you disappear, too.

I'm not just talking about books here, though. These are thoughts I've had about selling art, basically, that using the internet to reach out to more people in more places is going to sell more of what ever it is you have. The ideas just seemed to apply.

[Fran]

Dammit. Typepad ate my comment. And I live here!

Dina, you're absolutely right that the sales model's going to have to change for brick-and-mortar stores. We know that.

I'm pushing hard for us to get a part of the e-book pie, and I hope it can be worked out.

We do a lot of online and mail-order sales, and that's what's kept us afloat, frankly. But to put our entire inventory online would take either more manpower and time than we can afford, or a completely new inventory system that interfaces with the internet, which we seriously cannot afford. Most small businesses can't.

One of the former CEOs of a major publishing house is beginning to toss around ideas on how to save the indie, and some of what he says makes sense, so we'll see what happens.

It's a conundrum, and it's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Still, there really is no excuse for ordering a book (or any other goodie) and then airily dismissing your responsibility for it. At least in my opinion.

[Dina]

Yes, that inventory system would be the ticket, wouldn't it... and it sounds like they exist, at least. Now you just have to figure out a way to use the web until the prices of that software comes down - and it will eventually - as more small businesses create the market for it. So, who do you know that is a computer and web genius and close personal friend who might give the shop a continuation on that for less $$$ ?

And you are correct, if you order something, you should be prepared to pay for what you order, just like in a restaurant.

[Fran]

We do list our books online on Biblio.com, the ones we think are a bit special -- signed, collectable, things like that -- but we don't list our entire inventory. You'd have to list everything by hand individually, and that takes up far too much time.

We won't have a shopping cart on the website proper because that takes us into certain tax nightmares that I can't even begin to articulate. Except to say that it would probably mean us having to pay taxes to every State (and possibly every CITY in every State) where someone buys books. It's on the horizon, and it looks nasty. The logistics alone make my head hurt.