I love books. As I write this I am literally surrounded by them. Every wall, floor to ceiling.
I have friends who write books. I have other friends who are just as nutty about books as I am.
I read a lot of blogs and other sources of information about authors, publishers, etc.
Consequently, I have spent a decent amount of time worrying about things like:
- large conglomerates buying up publishing houses and trying to treat them like widget factories
- “No Human Involved” ordering of books by chains, resulting in the much talked about “death of the midlist” phenomenon, and the more-or-less-death of the careers of many writers that I want to see more books from.
- Large chains (or monopolistic distributors in the case of comics) having WAAAAY too much power over the publishers
..and so on. If you read “industry” stuff about publishing, especially genre publishing, you know what I mean.
Which is why I was not surprised to read about Australian book chain Angus & Robertson’s attempt to put the “economic rationalization” protection racket into effect. At this point I expect large corporate entities to act like sociopaths, even in the “culture” industries. In this story you see widget factory mentality, nigh-mafioso intimidation billing, references to incompetence and computer ordering, etc, etc.
I was, however, surprised by, and absolutely thrilled to read, the response that Micheal Rakusin, Director of Tower Books, sent to A&R.
Go read the details at the Sydney Morning Herald’s Entertainment blog.
And just to tease you, one of my favourite bits:
That Angus & Robertson is struggling for margin does not surprise me. It amazes me that the message has not become clear to your “management”: there are only so many costs you can cut, there is only so much destiny you can put in the hands of a computer system, there are only so many sweetheart deals you can do with large suppliers. After that, in order to prosper one actually has to know one’s product and have an appropriately staffed buying department. Most importantly, one has to train sales people of competence. You will never beat the DDSs at their cost cutting game, you will only prosper by putting “books” back into Angus & Robertson. And it would seem to me paramount to stop blaming suppliers for your misfortunes, trying ever harder to squeeze them to death, and actually focus on your core incompetencies in order to redress them.
Oh, and lest you think, without reading the piece, that Rakusin is making the “we lose money but it’s your cultural responsibility to look past that” argument, I should also note this bit:
More to the point, however, we have watched our business with Angus & Robertson dwindle year upon year since 2000. We had to wear the cost of sub-economic ordering from you through ownership changes, SAP installation, new management, and stock overhang. In summary our business with you has dropped from over $1.2 million at the end of 2000 to less than $600,000 in 2007.
You would be quite correct to question whether our offering to the market had changed in any way. The answer can be derived from the fact that during the same period our business with Dymocks, Book City, QBD and Borders continued to grow in double digits, our business with your own franchise stores has grown healthily, and our overall business during the same period has grown by more than 50%.
It’s not “we lose money”, it’s “you are too incompetent to get on the gravy train that everyone else is on”. I love it.
Updated: I see the Making Light crew had a go at this story a couple of hours after I did. Their observations, as in all matters–especially those relating to the writing/publishing areas, are well worth your time to read. And their comments are always top quality as well.
