Re: PA & Barnes & Noble
The PublishAmerica InfoCenter material appears to come from <a href="http://www.publishamerica.com/cgi-bin/pamessageboard/data/main/6654.htm" target="_new">this thread</a>.
<hR>
Time to do a line-by-line on the mendacious InfoCenter Twaddle in that thread too.
First, this message:
infocenter
Administrator
5/30/2003
<BLOCKQUOTE>
We've replied to this issue before, and we wish that we could correct the apparent communication challenges within Barnes and Noble. Here is some information about the issue posted again, followed by the text of a letter from the Director of Barnes & Noble's InPrint (print on demand) facility.</blockquote>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Contrary to what you may have been told by a local Barnes and Noble bookstore manager, they have no such policy at all, </blockquote>
Presumably as refusing to carry any PA books across the board.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
and no, they do not categorize PublishAmerica as anything other than what we are. </blockquote>
How much easier to say "they catagorize us as a traditional publisher" if that were the case. The way this reads, what it undoubtedly means is "they catagorize us as a vanity POD, and by golly we are a vanity POD."
<BLOCKQUOTE>
As a matter of fact, Barnes and Noble contacted us about joining their new print on demand InPrint operation, in which PublishAmerica is now a partner.</blockquote>
B&N at one point had a PoD operation called "InPrint," and owned their own digital printing machines. Perhaps B&N rented time on those machines to PA -- it's well within the realm of belief. Any time the presses weren't printing anything they were costing money. But B&N shut down their PoD operations in August of '03, selling all the hardware to Lightning Source International.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Not only does Barnes and Noble have no policy against stocking print on demand books, Barnes and Noble actually runs their own print on demand facility! And, in that facility, they actually print PublishAmerica books.</blockquote>
Yes, it's probably true that at some time they sold press time to PA. B&N has gotten out of that business since. Other than that, local managers can stock a small number of non-returnable books by local authors, at their option. I expect there are a number of hedges and caveats around that in internal B&N directives.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
We get along very well with Barnes and Noble, so well that they have quadrupled the number of books that they order from PublishAmerica during the past year. Your books are available from Barnes and Noble and all major bookstores and distributors.</blockquote>
Which year did they quadruple orders in? Was it this year, last year, some other year, or every year? Some real numbers would be very handy here.
"Available from" isn't the same as "stocked in." "Available from" means they will special order the books, when individually requested and paid in advance.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From: [Director of Barnes and Noble InPrint Operation]
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003
Subject: RE: Barnes and Noble
</blockquote>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
[My colleague] and I spoke today and clarified that your
titles will continue to be orderable through
Barnes & Noble.
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17:08:40</blockquote>
Note that "orderable" isn't the same thing as "stocked." It appears from this quoted portion of an email that there was a question of whether PublishAmerica books would continue to be orderable. I wonder what the problem was -- failure to ship in a reasonable time? Poor order fulfillment? Poor quality leading to customers requesting refunds?
<HR>
Second InfoCenter note:
Infocenter
Administrator
6/05/2003
21:44:24
<BLOCKQUOTE>
BN is a commercial institution, out to make money. They have not been doing too great lately, overall sales down 4 pct in February, 8 pct in March, 2 pct in April, and 0.5 pct in May. Their BN.com enterprise does even worse, they had to decide to cut their operation expenses by 50 pct, because the unit continues to lose money. Add to this their B. Dalton daughter's results: sales down more than 11 pct.</blockquote>
This is, simply stated, a flaming lie. As in "not true." As in "made up from whole cloth."
First of all, the question must be asked, when the charge is that B&N refuses to stock PA titles, why does InfoCenter feel obliged to attempt to trash B&N as their first move? What's the point of that?
Next, per B&N's financials filed with the SEC (in other words, if they fib they go to jail):
Gross sales (dollars in thousands)
13 weeks ending May 3, 2003
$1,185,605
Compare that to the same quarter, previous year:
13 weeks ending May 3, 2002
$1,133,126
Up 4.6% from the previous year.
While gross sales at B.Dalton were down, that was due to closing B.Dalton stores -- fewer stores produce lower total sales. Gross sales per store at B.Dalton were up.
Any business will attempt to cut its cost of doing business, in an attempt to make more profit.
Gross Profit, all stores (Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, and others)(Gross sales - cost of goods and occupancy, dollars in thousands)
1998 $862,891
1999 $1,002,314
2000 $1,206,080
2001 $1,310,352
2002 $1,413,493
2003 $1,627,248
That is, gross profits up by about 100 million dollars a year, every year, for the past five years. That doesn't look much like a business that has "not been doing too great lately."
BN.com, at the time PA posted this note, wasn't owned by Barnes&Noble. It was owned by Bertelsmann AG, a German conglomerate. Barnes&Noble bought bn.com from Bertelsmann on 15 September, 2003, for $165,406,000 in cash and notes.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
And that's not all. BN is also a 49 pct owner of vanity publisher iUniverse, an outfit that, while lavishly funded by venture capital (last year they received a $18 million injection), has yet to make a profit.</blockquote>
Again, completely untrue. At the time InfoCenter posted this message, B&N owned 22% of iUniverse.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
So there's your landscape. BN is willing to sell books, not only because that is the business they're in, but because they have to.</blockquote>
A nonsensical statement.
<BLOCKQUOTE>Do they sell print-on-demand books? You bet. They run their own on-demand presses, and they are now doing the printing of an ever-growing number of PA titles themselves, because they sell so well!</blockquote>
Because PA paid them to do so, is probably more like it. But, as noted above, Barnes&Noble is out of the PoD printing business now.
<BLOCKQUOTE>Other titles they order either directly from us, or from wholesaler Ingram who prints them at their own outfit Lightning Source. In fact, BN is one of PA's largest customers, placing orders virtually every day.</blockquote>
Orders virtually every day? Really? That means ... a minimum of 364 copies (since most orders are for single copies, right?)
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The message that some of you advocate to be issued to their local store managers has actually already been issued through BN's internal channels. Each store manager knows, or is supposed to know, where and how to order PA titles, and the majority of them does so regularly. If you delve into the history of this message board, you will find numerous examples of authors who arranged events in BN stores with great success.</blockquote>
They know how to order copies. Great. The question was about stocking copies, wasn't it? "If you delve into the history of this message board" you'll find even more examples of authors getting shut out of B&N -- until the messages are deleted and the authors banned, that is.
In any case, "arranging an event" isn't the same thing as stocking copies on the shelf, particularly not stocking copies on the shelf in stores outside of the author's driving range.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Does this mean that all local managers are helpful and pro-active? No, not always. We don't know for sure, but we suspect that there is some truth to the grapevine rumor that some managers detest BN's commitment to iUniverse.</blockquote>
As opposed to the grapevine rumor that managers detest PublishAmerica?
<BLOCKQUOTE> They had so many authors come up with substandard quality books that they paid a small fortune for to be published, books that sell badly but that BN stores are expected to order from their own on-demand printers regardless, that they go postal whenever their computer screen says "print on demand".</blockquote>
Substandard quality -- sell badly -- no wonder they go postal whenever the computer screen says "print on demand." By the way, InfoCenter, are you admitting here that PublishAmerica books are "print on demand" titles? I seem to recall you denying that basic fact.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
It is BN that has some internal educating to do, and at a headquarters level they are aware of this. BN headquarters continues to instruct their store managers that on-demand printing is the wave of the future (hence BN's heavy investments in on-demand printing equipment).</blockquote>
The guys at headquarters didn't get the news either:
B&N Abandons POD, Sells Shop to Lightning Source
by Jim Milliot, PW Daily for Booksellers -- 9/25/2003
BreakingNews
...
The acquisition was completed late last month, just before B&N.com announced its intention to stop selling e-books. The two decisions remove B&N from areas that many thought were the future of book publishing and bookselling.
<BLOCKQUOTE>They also show on their computer databases that all (!) PA titles can safely be ordered, together with the on-demand printed titles of the majority of our fellow traditional publishers, including Random House, Simon&Schuster, HarperCollins, etc.</blockquote>
InfoCenter is attempting to claim that digitally printed books from major traditional publishers are the equivalent of Print on Demand titles from PA. Merely because they use the same hardware you do doesn't mean they use the same business model, you know.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
We continue to maintain excellent relations with BN headquarters, and they assure us that more letterhead-carrying paperwork is unnecessary to underscore a corporate policy that is already in place, and we believe they're right because the sales numbers show it.</blockquote>
An incoherent paragraph. BN returns your phone calls, but they refuse to put out a directive to their store managers telling them to stock PA books, is what this looks like.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Need a little consolation for those who still run into a brick wall? BN has recently forced their vanity daughter iUniverse to drastically cut back on the number of titles that automatically qualify for special BN treatment, from many thousands down to a few hundred. Over time, this will help to ease the nerves of store managers who are only human. They will eventually know how to distinguish between vanity published books and traditionally published books such as PA's.</blockquote>
Don't worry, chums -- the bookstore managers have long-since figured out how to tell the difference between traditionally published books and vanity titles such as PA's. Why do you think that your authors had, and continue to have, such a hard time getting their books on the shelves?
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Just give those poor souls some time. They will come around.</blockquote>
In the thirteen months since this message from InfoCenter was posted things have gone from bad to worse for PA authors. When are those "poor souls" going to "come around"?