Re: Using a Pen Name and how?

--- In [email protected], Elizabeth Burton <EBurton@...>
wrote:
>
> It isn't. Maybe Freddie's confusing it with daylight saving time. ;-)
> 
> Returns were initiated during the Great Depression as a way for  
> publishing companies to stay afloat. As is the case whenever people  
> struggle to meet their basic needs, books became a luxury many if not  
> most people couldn't afford. Bookstores started going the way of  
> banks, which meant publishers had no means of selling their wares.
> 
> Up to that point, bookstores acquired stock the way any other retailer  
> did: they ordered it, received shipment and paid on delivery. Now,  
> however, publishers offered to ship books on consignment for X amount  
> of time (usually 90 days) without payment and then allowed any unsold  
> copies to be shipped back in exchange for credit to order more books.  
> In this way, marginal bookstores were able to continually offer new  
> stock without having to wait for the old stuff to sell.

I hadn't heard this story, but it tracks a lot better than what
Freddie said.

But, as I understand it,  US tax laws don't allow publishers to sell
on consignment. So shipments to bookstores are considered firm sales,
but the bookstore has the right to return the title under certain
conditions.

It works out the same as consignment, but for tax purposes it isn't a
consignment sale.

> 
> Where the crisis arose was in the late 80s and early 90s when Borders  
> and Barnes & Noble began expanding to their present size. They  
> persuaded the publishers to give them huge discounts and agree to  
> accept unlimited returns in exchange for the exposure possible in a  
> large retail chain. What then ensued was that the superchains used the  
> system to keep their overhead low and the new stock flowing, to the  
> point where returns surged from 10-15% to the current 25%, 30% and more.
> 
> Liz
> Elizabeth Burton, Executive Editor
> Zumaya Publications LLC
> 

Well, the way you put it, it sounds like the publishers were stupid or
misguided, and that B&N was taking advantage of them or something.

Having gone through that period while working for several national
publishers, I'm not sure I'd put it quite like that. It was more of an
incremental thing that happened through the normal course of business.
B&N opened huge stores, stocked them, and had a lot of product flowing
through them, all following the normal terms that publishers offered
to all bookstores. I'm not even sure that B&N knew that they were
going to end up returning so much, at least not initially.

But, the end result was that more of the power in the chain moved from
publishers to retailers. Until Amazon came along, it really seemed
like B&N was going to rule the market.

Kent






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