Following up to the issue of book store-to-publisher returns last week (here), Kenneth Whyte discovered that other retailers are not that different from the book business after all:
“Indigo Books and Music” by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is licensed under CC0 1.0
Last week I wrote about the horrible, wasteful publishing-wide policy of booksellers returning unsold books for full refunds rather than putting them on sale. Some 30 percent of books in stores are sent back to publishers who bury, pulp, or remainder them. I compared this practice to other retail sectors:
If I were in the ugly sweater business, I’d sell 500 ugly sweaters to Saks at $200-a-piece. Saks pays me 500x$200=$100,000, marks the ugly sweaters up to $500, and lays them out on tidy glass shelves under track lighting. Whatever is left after the Christmas season is marked down to half price on crowded sales racks. If Saks still has some ugly sweaters in January, it will ship them to the outlet store where they’re offered at still greater discounts.
Our friend, author and regular SHuSH reader Ken McGoogan, sent my comments to a mature student he teaches. She comes from the fashion industry and says it’s not so simple:
The reality is, if Saks cannot sell that ugly sweater, they will ask for mark-down money from the brand (the wholesaler) who sold them that ugly sweater. If the brand is not willing to give Saks that mark-down money, they will never carry anything from the brand again. Is mark-down money better than returns? Honestly, it’s not that much better. The amount of the mark-down money is an often shocking figure. And this is not just for Saks, all big retailers do it, without exception.
Barnes & Noble or Chapters are just like department stores. The business model is the same. The only thing is, if the readers found out how much waste the book returns are generating every year, it’ll be a big turn off for the customers. They’d rather force themselves to read e-books or audio books than be part of the wasteful culture. Especially for the younger generation, they are buying less garments because of the fashion industry’s wasteful level. Fyi, a lot of new clothes and unsold inventories are burned every year as they are running out of storage spaces.
I stand corrected. All retail sucks, not just book retail. And the book industry had better sort this out before the aforementioned younger generation begins to focus on it.
