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Booksellers roll out New Year sales promotions
03.01.12 | Lisa Campbell
Booksellers are discounting books and e-books by up to 80% in post-Christmas promotions.
Amazon, which began its January Deals early in December, ran a Boxing Day Deals Week which finished on Sunday and is also offering books with large discounts though its Stock Clearance and 12 Days of Kindle promotions.
A collection of five Jo Nesbo books is being sold for £9.99 – a discount of 75% off, through the Stock Clearance promotion for example and the 12 Days of Kindle promotion is selling a range of e-books for 99p.
Waterstone’s is offering customers up to 50% off books in store and online, running promotions reminding customers to "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves".
W H Smith is offering up to 80% off many of its titles. The high street chain bookseller is also offering customers Kobo e-books from 99p, rivalling Amazon’s 12-day Kindle deal.
Play.com is advertising a Winter Sale, selling the likes of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini for £9.39 instead of an r.r.p of £18.99.
Blackwell is offering customers up to 50% discount from frontlist titles, and has promoted from its 100 History Books of the World collection. Euan Hirst, manager of the flagship Blackwell Broad Street branch in Oxford, said sales in his store were up year-on-year and said larger stores like Cambridge and Edinburgh had done well this Christmas.
He said: "We had a strong week in the run up to Christmas and I think the better weather helped our year-on-year sales. I think customers are bored of the straight forward January sales deals and are looking for something more imaginative rather than red sales sign everywhere."
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Amazon and Book Depository often sell books at prices we (publishers) couldn't afford to sell them for direct. So they must run at a loss on some books. It's not always the case that publishers give discounts - we don't. Our books are still sold dirt cheap by some online booksellers and with free international postage too.
We can't compete with the discounts Amazon are giving on ebooks either. I'm not sure how we're supposed to sell our Kindle books with the massive discounts they're giving on their selected range of bargain books.
I'm saddened by what's happening to bookshops, but they never stocked the kind of books I wanted to read so online sellers did come as a godsend to me. Finally I could buy poetry, short stories and literary fiction apart from the bestsellers. If everybody is competing to sell the bestsellers at the most attractive price then Amazon will win. Surely independent bookshops need to stock the kind of book Amazon doesn't reliably supply. They're very unreliable with books that don't sell in huge quantities. They just don't stock or supply them although they display them.
Under the terms of our contract we pay authors 10% of the cover price in royalties, so the cover price is important. We also only sell at one rate through our distributor Central Books. So the rate is fixed to as Corey suggested. But the online sellers still sell the books at a huge discount. The prices are actually less than they buy the books for from our distributor. It's a strange business.
Who is 'A Publisher'. It would be good to know so that we could take an informed decision about whether to stock its books in our stores. With the exception of a few 'must have' fiction authors, there are so many good books around that we don't have to lend our shelves to crass publishers like this. Who are you 'publisher'?
The prices are designed to force the high street out of business and is anti-competitive. Once the High Street has gone prices will rise - by a lot for the non-bestseller - and there will be wailing in the press about the good old days of bookshops. The only possible way to address this is to reduce the discount given to online booksellers. But publishers don't have the guts or the nous.
All that would mean is my titles wouldn't be in your closing down sale. I could live with that.
This is exactly how we run things. We also have a policy of not getting involved in exclusivity deals as we believe this hurts the industry. This does not help our relationship with Indie booksellers, however, as nine times out of ten we find they do not want to take a risk stocking our titles. Thus, unfortunately, we have to stick with Waterstones and Amazon.
I think the elephant in the room in this debate is Amazon Marketplace. The reason why Amazon can afford to sell so many new books at a loss is because they are raking in fees from Marketplace sellers for doing absolutely nothing other than providing an online shop window. This is the real anti-competitive element of their site. They are able to corner the market in new books (and CDs and DVDs and just about anything else) by offering artificially low prices while at the same time taking a massive cut from all the Marketplace sellers who would once have been their competitors. It's a brilliant strategy and it works like a dream for Amazon and their customers - for now. But who knows where this elephant is leading us all...?
Isn't predatory pricing anti-competitive and against the law? Is consistently selling below cost considered predatory?
It seems to me bookshops want to blame the publishers, but it makes no difference if we don't give a discount. The online sellers discount the books anyway. I see them selling our books for £3. We don't discount any of our books so they are selling them at a loss.
But the fact is that Amazon don't supply many or most of the books they display. When I let all of our following know this they buy elsewhere and this is the message that needs to get out. Look at all of our books on Amazon, and look at the books by similar literary publishers. They are all displayed but with the message 'Out of Stock' or 'Unavailable'.
The worst thing about this is that they still take orders for the books saying they will get them when they're back in stock. None of our books are out of stock. They are all easy for Amazon to supply via Central Books. There are many publishers who have been complaining to Amazon about this for years but it makes no difference.
They take orders for books they have no intention of supplying when those books are easily available via Nielsen and the distributors. You only have to compare what they say about our books on Amazon and on Book Depository. They own Book Depository and yet Book Depository take orders and supply all of our books immediately.
Amazon gives the impression our books are out of print or hard to get, which isn't true. By taking orders and sending emails over a period of weeks telling customers the book isn't in stock yet but they will let them know when it is they lose publishers and authors a high number of sales. I was with a larger literary publisher before starting my own company, and the same thing happened for them.
Customers use Amazon for information on book availability and the message needs to get out that they don't supply many or most of the books they display. When they are seen as this unreliable it will make a difference. It also means there are many books Amazon doesn't supply which bookshops could sell. The reason customers have come into shops, having seen a lower price on Amazon, may well be that Amazon didn't actually supply the book - that's the marketing message bookshops need to put across.
This isn't just my company I'm talking about - I've had this discussion with a number of publishers including some well established literary fiction and poetry publishers. They have tried and tried with Amazon but get nowhere. I know one very powerful woman in publishing tried a strong campaign and got nowhere. The sad thing is that customers still believe the information on Amazon and keep wanting to buy there - they trust Amazon. With more information about what is really happening they wouldn't have this trust and would shop elsewhere.
Instead of blaming publishers for doing nothing, you should realise we have been trying for years but they don't listen. They do lose a massive number of sales by taking orders and not supplying books. The discounted prices aren't as serious a problem as that.
The way they display wrong information and take orders with no intention of supplying the books should be illegal in my opinion.
@ Old Bookseller, I don't think prices will rise even if bookshops go. If they did we would have more chance of selling books direct from our own website, which would really help. But I think online sellers will always have competitive pricing because otherwise somebody else could easily sell for lower. As they have marketplace resellers the competition for pricing is all gathered in one place. It's the resellers who are selling our books for less than cost, although Book Depository offers pre-order prices we can't match when you take into account their free postage.
I'm sad about bookshops but it won't actually have a big impact on non bestsellers because they're so hard to get into many bookshops anyway. It won't affect our pricing on non bestsellers at all. We have always had to find ways to sell them without the support of bookshops.
It's a pity bookshops don't work more with publishers of literary fiction and poetry. All books by publishers like us are supplied by the distributor sale or return, so we do support bookshops in various ways. I drum up a great crowd for events and could fill bookshops with them - I hold readings and open mics with the chance for those who read to submit to an anthology. I offer to hold events at bookshops and fill their store but they want to charge £200-£400, which we can't justify, so I do it in a library and support them.
There are opportunities bookshops could take, I think, and I'd suggest a focus on the books Amazon is unreliable at supplying, plus I have a great belief in events to bring that footfall you want.
I agree with that completely. The bleating about lack of support would be a lot more valid if the average Indy didn't buy the majority of their stock through wholesalers.
Support is a two way street.
They can buy through a wholesaler with us - Central Books. But they don't. I've been pleased to have some support from bookshops, but it's not really the main source of our sales. Without Book Depository it would be much harder for us to keep going. And sales of our Kindles have been quite good over Christmas too. People look on Amazon when they can't find our books in shops and buy from us as we're listed as resellers. We really need these online sellers.
A publisher you are way off line . They need to buy off wholesalers to survive . Do you actually know what wholesalers do for indies?
You are clearly a thoroughly nasty piece of work who deserves to be trampled on by the likes of Amazon who you are so clearly in love with. If they decided not to stock 2 of the 5 books you publish you'd be dead in the water.
Well yes, we absolutely have to stock our books with a wholesaler. Most bookshops and online sellers will only buy from them. We love it if people buy direct from the website but very few people will so wholesalers are vital.
The wholesaler also supplies the books sale or return to bookshops all over the UK and Ireland, so bookshops are really supported by all of this. We couldn't really manage the workload without them warehousing our books.
We could give independent bookshops a lower rate if we didn't have to go through a wholesaler though, because a commission is taken at each stage. But we have to sign a contract only to use the wholesalers in the UK. We do arrange better discounts for bookshops overseas, while still managing to pay the authors their full 10% of cover price royalties.
I get the feeling the problem with Amazon not supplying many of the books they display could be that they mainly deal through their wholesaler Gardners. Gardners won't work with publishers like us who don't have bestsellers, so it's really hard to get Amazon to actually supply our books when they take orders. The same is true for many excellent presses specialising in literary fiction and poetry.
So I do think wholesalers can be a problem. Some wholesalers are also slow to deliver to bookshops which puts them off stocking the books, but the larger wholesalers won't support literary fiction and poetry presses so it's a vicious circle.
I can understand the frustration of publishers who feel it's a problem that bookshops insist on dealing with a wholesaler. We just have to work with it though, because that's how it is.
Some people think the below cost books displayed by online sellers don't actually exist, and that they're 'loss leaders' attracting people to their sites when they have no intention of supplying the book. Apparently this is illegal and when somebody in a strong enough position challenges it legally hopefully it will stop. It's easy to blame the publishers for discounting, but these low prices seem to me to be due to aggressive marketing strategies by some online sellers. The important way to challenge this is to increase awareness in buyers that these books don't exist and won't be supplied if ordered.
Yes, I know. Wholesalers, especially Gardners and Berts, are fantastic. Supportive of publishers and stores, I have no row with them.
My point is this, if you buy your stock exclusively through a wholesaler, and don't see the rep, what right do you have to complain about your base level of discount?
The stores that support us get a lot back, in terms of extra margin, signed stock, events, review copies, free copies for their book club etc etc.
Those that don't will never get any of this.
Take a deep breath, realise you are a better person, know that "A publisher" is trolling and almost certainly not a publisher, release the breath and concearn yourself with more important things.
I'm rather afraid I am. And a commercially focussed one at that
I should say that I mean I'd help in London with events but we do support bookshops all over the UK and Ireland as our authors are widespread in the UK and Ireland.
I believe 'loss leading' is actually illegal, it just needs somebody powerful enough to have the legal support to prove it. I've had it suggested to me that French bookshops are more likely to do this and it's bound to happen.
Mr D, I run a publishing house dedicated to supplying new pulp fiction novellas. Please do check us out at www.pulppress.co.uk and do get in touch. It will be very much appreciated.