Fear & Trembling at BookExpo America Sales are up. So why are independent booksellers
so nervous?
by Dominic Ali
Welcome to BookExpo America
2000, Ground Zero for book publishing in the 21st century. From
June 2 to 4, Chicago’s McCormick Place convention hall was home
to over 2,000 exhibitors and more than 20,000 industry insiders:
booksellers, publishers, manufacturers, distributors, and people
like me--starving book lovers desperate for free books, promotional
goodies, and a chance to get drunk at various publishing parties.
As America’s largest publishing tradeshow, the BEA sets the
tone for the book biz in the English-speaking world. This is
the place to witness the very best of the publishing industry,
and also the very worst.
The BEA is the place for booksellers from
across America and around the world to meet face-to-face with
their oh-so-glamorous suppliers--household names like Random
House, Penguin, and HarperCollins. They take part in industry
workshops, schmooze with the famous, and check out advance releases.
Publishers trot out authors like prized ponies, hype soon-to-be-released
books, and check out the competition for shelf-space in bookstores.
Everyone benefits.
I talked to a lot of people at the BookExpo, and we discussed
upcoming books, number of units sold, deal-making with celebrity-authors,
and old-fashioned gossip. But one thing we never discussed was
the actual content of books. Had anyone actually read a book
in the last 6 months? Had I? Does skimming the first three chapters
of Harry Potter count? It’s a strange feeling for someone unaccustomed
to thinking of books as commodities to suddenly find himself
surrounded by thousands of people who do.
And what a crowd. This being America, the
accents ranged from West Coast mellow to New York bark, with
plenty of Southern drawls and Midwestern twangs in between.
All aspects of bookselling were represented: hundreds of high-powered
New York editors of capital-L literature and indie publishers
working out of bedrooms and home-offices; companies devoted
to security alarms, lighting, and display fixtures; and even
a manufacturer selling that mainstay of the modern bookstore,
espresso machines. Hell, there were over 30 bookmark manufacturers
represented. And then there were the stars.
Over the weekend, McCormick Place felt like
a bookstore come to life. People you’re used to seeing in postage-stamp
sized photos on book jackets had suddenly turned into real live
human beings, shaking hands, doing interviews, and autographing
books. Authors like Martin Amis, Bill Bryson, and Michael Ondaatje
hustled their latest books along with celebrity authors like
baseball player Sammy Sosa, comedian Jerry Stiller, Julie ”Mary
Poppins” Andrews Edwards, and actress Marilu Henner (remember
“Elaine” from “Taxi”?). There were others, including Dr. Ruth
Westheimer; former New York Observer writer Candace Bushnell
(whose column was the basis for HBO’s hit, Sex in the City),
and performance artist Karen Finley. Even “Dummies Man”, the
triangle-head icon from IDG Books’ For Dummies titles was posing
for photos. And with good reason. Every well-placed celebrity
handshake and smile is probably worth 1,000 extra book orders.
Scores of known and unknown authors took
turns at a long row of end-to-end tables in the Autograph Area
located at the rear section of the hall. In front of each author
was a line-up of attendees patiently waiting to have books autographed.
It resembled the washroom queue for a Stones concert. Good taste
prevailed for once, and I resisted the urge to get my books
inscribed: “To my good friend Slobodan Milosevic,” so I could
re-sell them as collector’s items on eBay.
The highlight of BEA 2000 was a speech by
Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos. The clown prince of e-commerce
entertained a crowd of around 1,000 with details about Amazon’s
rise to power. Numerous magazines have analyzed his company
and he joked that his favorite cover-line was “Amazon.org” --
because his company is “obviously a not-for-profit.” The crowd
laughed with approval, temporarily forgetting that several independently-owned
booksellers are in the same predicament.
Almost unheard of five years ago, the market
share of adult books purchased online tripled, from 1.9% in
1998 to 5.4% last year. Bezos also said e-commerce probably
wouldn't take over bookselling, and predicted that in about
10 years online sales would account for only 15% of sales.
But that hardly helps booksellers sleep at
night. We live in an e-world, and that’s affected everything.
Just two years ago the official BEA directory listed about 20
exhibitors involved in Internet Marketing and Sales. This year
there were over 50. In 1998 the directory carried 15 listings
of electronic book exhibitors, while this year there were more
than 30. It isn’t difficult to imagine a future convention where
there won’t be a paper book in sight.
Jeff Bezos, it turns out, is a firm believer
in the future of electronic books, but only when copyright issues,
piracy, pricing issues, and the quality of display devices evolves
to make them as accessible as their paper cousins. Bezos isn’t
alone. In March, Stephen King, the Elvis of the publishing world,
tried an e-novella experiment. He made Riding the Bullet available
online, and it was downloaded on 400,000 computers and electronic
book readers. According to Bezos, e-books aren’t a question
of if, but a question of when.
During Bezos’s speech it occurred to me that
I could never make it as bookseller. Reason number one, technological
change scares me. A number of companies have bet millions of
dollars that e-books will take off. A new software program called
Microsoft ReaderWorks even allows you to turn your musings into
downloadable books for portable computers. This has frightening
possibilities for readers. If forwarded jokes from your family
and friends weren’t bad enough, you‘ll soon be forwarded entire
books.
And it’s even scarier for booksellers. Many
authors have already bypassed publishers with their own self-produced
tomes. Now there’s little to stop authors from bypassing bookstores
altogether and selling books online--publishing’s equivalent
of the MP3.
Although cynics say that nobody reads anymore,
the numbers tell a different story. The New York-based Book
Industry Study Group estimates that 2.3 billion books were sold
in America last year, with consumers spending $30.5 billion
dollars (U.S.). That’s up from 2.2. billion books sold in 1998,
when Americans spent $28.78 billion (U.S.). Those are numbers
worthy of Chicken Soup for the Book Publishers’ Soul. Canada’s
not too shabby, either. According to StatsCan’s most recent
figures, English language Canadian publishers had sales of $1.1
billion (Cdn.) in 1994-1995, and almost $1.2 billion (Cdn.)
in ‘96-97.
So if the numbers are up, why did booksellers
seem so nervous at this year’s BookExpo? This leads to my second
reason not to become a bookseller: “big box booksellers”—mammoth
chain bookstores with Wal-Mart mentalities. Because of their
massive size, box stores like Canada’s Chapters and Indigo—and
their American counterparts Borders and Barnes & Noble—can buy
John Grisham and J.K. Rowling by the ton. Every dollar spent
in a chain bookstore means that dollar isn’t spent in an independently-owned
shop. As a champion of the underdog I abhor box stores. But
because of their longer hours, I still shop in them, which is
sort of like an alcoholic drinking to forget about cirrhosis
of the liver.
The list of dead and dying indie bookstores
is growing. Casualties include Toronto’s Writers & Co., Britnells,
and Edwards Books. Vancouver’s Duthie Books is now down to just
one store in Kitsilano. There used to be nine. Lifelong bookseller
Cathy Legate took over Duthie Books from her father Bill Duthie,
and she’s felt the painful changes in bookselling. “They forced
us to offer more deals,” she says. Things got tough for Duthie
Books once the big boxes like Chapters moved to town. It boils
down to economies of scale, where bigger is better, and biggest
is best.
So how do bookstores make money, anyway?
Rowly Lorimer, Director of Simon Fraser University’s Canadian
Centre for Studies in Publishing explains: booksellers buy books
from publishers or wholesalers at a discount, usually around
40%. The books are then sold for the full list price. A typical
$30 hardcover, for example, would make a bookseller $12. To
remain competitive, independent stores like Duthie Books have
offered deep discounts the way stores like Chapters do, which
cuts into their bottom line.
On top of increased competition, Legate and
other stores invested thousands of dollars in equipment to sell
books online. In Legate’s case, it didn’t work out. “There’s
high-intensive work selling books on the Internet.” All the
high-intensive work didn’t pay off, and she estimates that she’s
sold only 100 books online in the past year. “I’m getting less
impressed with the Internet.”
The plight of independent bookstores was lost
on me as I shuffled through McCormick Place, trying to figure
out the exhibitors. It’s always interesting to see how the faces
change as the day wears on. From 9 a.m. to 12 noon, the air
was generally upbeat and positive, as sales & marketing
(S&M) teams won friends and influenced people with their
bright smiles and professional business attire. They quickly
settled into a routine of answering the same monotonous questions
over and over: “When is (enter author’s name here) coming to
my town?”, “When will (enter title of book here) be coming out
in paperback?” By 3 p.m. until the day’s closing at 6 p.m.,
the smiles had faded and the faces openly showed contempt--especially
for Gore-Tex wearing Canucks like me, with one eye on party
invitations and another on free gifts for my friends back home..
I’ve always lacked the discipline to say
no, especially to the willowy wide-eyed publicists in skirts
who’ve just graduated from college and are sooo happy to meet
me. As soon as they spotted the red “Press” ribbon on my official
BEA badge, they’d pounce. The pitch usually went something like
this: “We’ve got a great book coming out in a few months called
(enter book title here.) The author’s a really great interview
and we’re really excited about it, I’m sure it would be just
right for you. While you’re here, why don’t you take one of
our bookmarks/stickers/erasers/pencils/pens/jujubes. Here’s
a catalog. ”And that is how I ended up carting around 30 lbs.
of reading material and stationery supplies that will last me
until BookExpo 2001.
Pens and pencils emblazoned with company
logos are a good catch, but I was after bigger game: invitations
to the publishers’ parties. At the BEA, this is where the real
fun is at. The most treasured invites promise complimentary
drinks, but they require a lot of schmoozing and charm to obtain.
As tempting as the open bars are, it’s the alternative parties
hosted by small presses that are my favorites. I made it to
three. The alternative press parties can always be counted on
for an interesting crowd of bohemian publishers and drunken
literary-types full of post-ironic witticisms. The day’s events
on the football-field length convention hall provided lots of
material to riff on.
In addition to plenty of malicious gossip
about other publishers (“What a waste of trees”), there were
lots of jokes. No one was spared our wrath: not the staff at
big box booksellers (“I went in there looking for Zen & the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and they sent me to the automotive
section”); not technology (“Publishing on demand? Just what
the world needs, more books!”); not publishing trends (“We’re
a nation of Dummies and Idiots”).
On the plane back to Vancouver with my pens
and erasers, I thought about what I’d seen and heard. What’s
the future of the book and the future of publishing? I was a
scared by what I’d witnessed over the previous couple of days.
As much fun as the party chat and cocktails were, it was back
to the real world for me--combing through the bookstore aisles,
checking out cover designs, laughing at “About The Author” blurbs
and fondling the delicate pages of treasured literary works.
I just hope that in five years I can walk through the aisles
of an independent bookstore. Independent bookstores hope so,
too.
