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| Hearsay: |
Crikey! A retailer down under, redeveloping its business model, will be setting a “minimum earnings ratio” for publishers. You don’t meet their standards? They don’t carry your books. As far as I know, this goes on everywhere here already. The news here is just a matter of it being said so boldly and the correspondence being published and the publisher kicking the retailer’s ass in a well-worded return letter. We’re headed to hell in a handbasket, people. And shoppers and retailers are the ones carrying us there.
Angus & Robertson’s demand that small- to medium-sized Australian publishers and distributors pay amounts said to range from $2,500 to $100,000 in order to have their books stocked in the chain’s stores has brought angry reaction from the book industry and book buyers. (See Undercover yesterday.)
Below is the full text of the letter that began the furore, and the reply sent by Michael Rakusin, director of Tower Books, to A&R Whitcoulls Group commercial manager, Charlie Rimmer. He has not yet had a response from A&R.
With the raw contempt on display in the first letter, I imagine he never will. Aussie readers: tell us the situation. Is it time for a boycott?
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August 13th, 2007 at 10:50 am
It’s not the “minimum earnings” ratio that’s the issue — every bookstore wants to carry titles that are profitable. It’s the passing of any risk on to the supplier by invoicing the publisher for the “gap” between its titles profitability and the bookseller’s internal measure of success.
Is anyone aware of any retailer in any industry that does this?
August 13th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Angus & Robertson (Anguish & Robbery to some of us) is a poorly regarded chain store. It is an old name, and was once venerable, but the corporate goons got hold of it and now it suffers from the “universal manager syndrome”. The MBAs at the top think they can run anything the same way: bookstores, brick factories, phone companies, whatever. And so they are now learning the peculiarities of the book trade. But maybe too late: no serious book lover goes there. Their stores are dull collections of Dan Brown, and the staff (with some exceptions) are untrained and indifferent. No boycott necessary, it will probably die by its own hand.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
This turns my stomach, but Rakusin’s reply gives me hope. Give ‘em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves, I say.