Borders + B&N = Do Not Want!
Last week, GalleyCat reported on the possibility of Borders buying Barnes & Noble. I don’t give a lot of credence to rumors, and I’m doubtful this one will actually happen. But the idea scares me.
Let me tell you a story from years ago. Tobias Buckell and I were in Chicago for Windycon, along with my then-agent Steve Mancino. When we weren’t conventioning, we headed out to various bookstores to sign stock: Crystal Rain for Toby, and Goblin Quest for me. Within an hour, we had the routine down:
When we went into a Borders, I would run to grab my goblin books, autographing like a fiend. Toby got to sit around twiddling his thumbs.
When we went to B&N, it was my turn on thumb-twiddling duty while Toby did his autographing thing.
There were a few exceptions, but we hit a lot of stores, and the pattern was obvious. Borders liked the goblins, but wasn’t interested in Caribbean steampunk space adventure. B&N liked Crystal Rain, but wasn’t excited about goblins.
In each case, the chain’s buyer had looked at our books and decided whether or not to stock our books. How much better would Goblin Quest have sold if the B&N buyer had liked it? How much worse would I have done if the Borders buyer hadn’t?
These are the two biggest brick & mortar chains in the United States, meaning a good portion of book sales go through these two businesses.
Imagine this hypothetical merger actually goes through. Now it’s one chain. One buyer. One person’s opinion will have an even greater impact on your sales. One person determines which books you find on the shelves, and which ones you don’t.
It scares me.
I imagine some will see this as yet more proof that brick & mortar stores are dying, and online sales/e-books are the wave of the future. Amazon has millions of books available, after all. (Aside from the ones they ban for being too naughty.) But that means your book is one among millions. I know Amazon is working to help readers find new books/authors they’ll like, but I don’t think they’re there yet.
I believe there is a need for a gatekeeper function. Physical stores have to rotate stock, emphasizing new releases, popular titles, and books they believe customers will buy. They go through those millions of titles to find the ones they believe their customers are most interested in. So if your book gets into the stores, it has a better chance of being seen by random browsers.
Let me put it this way. Amazon has a listing for every single Publish America title. Your local bookstore might special order a PA title for you, but you’re not going to find them eating up shelf space.
When you have a lot of bookstores making different choices, I think this model can work. Particularly when stores have the autonomy to buy and stock books that will be popular in that region. When only two chains dominate sales, the bookstore-as-gatekeeper model develops problems, but it’s better than a single big chain. The idea of merging the two, or of Borders simply going out of business . . . either way, you’re left with one giant. One gatekeeper controlling a frighteningly disproportionate number of books.
My agent has posted his thoughts about the state of Borders and the two big U.S. chains. NPR recently published an article talking about how the changing nature of bookselling could actually strengthen the independent bookstore.
What do you think?
Michael R Underwood
December 15, 2010 @ 9:56 am
I think that a B&N/Borders merge would be a horrible idea, something comparable to the bad that would be Borders closing.
You’re exactly right to beware the effect that a consolidated B&N/Borders or lone B&N national chain would have. In my job, I sell books to dozens of buyers, so that if one person has a personal dislike for a book I believe to have strong potential, it doesn’t have as much an effect on a book’s overall visibility.
Now, this wouldn’t leave just one important buyer. There’s also Amazon, Books-a-Million, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, as well as buyers for other markets like Levi and Follett, as well as Indigo in Canada. But it’s very difficult to dismiss the worry.
As for the possibility that current conditions could be good for indies — that’s a good topic for a whole other essay — as someone who spends a lot of time making my way through indie bookstores, I have some thoughts.
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 10:02 am
I’m hoping to see Books-a-Million grow. I’m not aware of any in my region, but I’ve been to a few stores in other states, and liked ’em. And Canada has Indigo/Chapters, of course. So I know a B&N/Borders consolodation wouldn’t turn a single buyer into the Absolute Emperor of Bookdom, but yeah … worrisome indeed.
I’d be curious to hear your indie thoughts!
Michael R Underwood
December 15, 2010 @ 10:05 am
I started a series of blog posts giving my perspective on the publishing industry, so it’s a good place to continue. As a blatant plug, the first of those posts is at my blog. 🙂
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 10:28 am
Cool, thank you!
(And that’s http://geektheory.wordpress.com/ for anyone else reading along.)
Joe Selby
December 15, 2010 @ 10:51 am
Borders only has two options left to it and the whole buy B&N thing took me totally by surprise. They can buy B&N and consolidate the brick/mortar costs or they can go out of business. There’s nothing else left for them.
Stephen Watkins
December 15, 2010 @ 11:59 am
Joe’s response sort of poses an interesting question… which is worse for books: a single Borders + B&N bookseller, or Borders going out of business leaving a single B&N bookseller?
(Although, I thought B-A-M was bringing up a not-that-distant third in the US… I guess I didn’t realize Borders and B&N were that dominant.)
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Joshua Bilmes
December 15, 2010 @ 12:53 pm
Books a Million has room to grow and probably would if Borders were to go out of business. They carry some goblin books. However, at least in the DC area where I’m best able to visit their stores, the typical BAM has a smaller selection than a typical B&N or Borders, and I don’t think they’d fully replace Borders. Maybe if they were taking over the leases of some bigger boxed Borders stores the selection would expand. All of this could be theoretical, though, since BAM would need financing to expand and who’s gonna rush to expand the #3 chain in what many consider a dying business right after the #2 belly-ups?
Shawn
December 15, 2010 @ 2:42 pm
I love books, & I used to love bookstores. There are B&N, Borders, and BAM in my area, & I find that most of them have gone downhill. Maybe this is just me, but here’s what I find disappointing:
— B&N bookstores are claustrophobic. They have tons of books, but the stacks are packed too close together and shelves are well over my head (I’m not a short woman, either). Additionally, they cram so many kiosks into the walkways that it feels impossible to move, & you can’t take the time to really peruse the books or you block the aisles entirely. I always end up feeling cramped, crowded, and frustrated in a B & N.
— BAM feels like a Sam’s Club warehouse. They are cold with harsh lighting, and always seem to have a vague sense of disarray, as if they didn’t hire enough people to work a shift so nobody straightens things out. They have less selection in their fiction categories than B&N or Borders, and I routinely feel just flat unwelcome in their stores.
— I have a Borders right next to my office, so it’s usually the one that’s easiest to go to, but they have been driving me nuts lately. I love the clerks there, but the management keeps moving the new release paperback table all over the store, which means every 3rd or 4th visit, I would have to hunt for it. On occasion, they also label it as something else, which made it even harder to find. And while I love the ability to go online & reserve copies of books in the store for pick up later that day, more and more, Borders either doesn’t have the new release in the store even though the computer inventory says it’s there, or they have shelved it somewhere so weird that nobody can find it. When Gail Carriger’s 3rd book came out, the Borders store didn’t have it in stock for weeks.
My favorite bookstore is an indie new/used place that’s somewhat out of my way. They specialize in mysteries, but will order any book, regardless of genre, if you ask them to. The shop is warm and cozy. The shelves are well spaced, they have a very good selection, there’s a sweet little reading nook, there’s an obvious, well labeled, accessible “new release” area, and the owners are wonderful. And if you go into the store to pick up the books you order, they don’t charge shipping. If I had easy access to two or three indie shops like that, I’d never set foot in a big box chain store.
In fact, it was the Gail Carriger new release fiasco at Borders that drove me head long into Kindle … I found the app for my smart phone the next day, was able to download the book in literally 30 seconds, and start reading immediately. I used to go into Borders every Tuesday to check out new releases, and drop $40 or $50 on impulse buys. Now? I download must have new releases on the Kindle, and I order stuff through Mysteries & More. I’ve only been in my local Borders a couple of times since September.
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 2:51 pm
My agent commented below that if Borders goes out of business, BAM might grow and start to fill in some of that gap. I’d say just read his comment, ’cause he knows this stuff a lot better than I do 🙂
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 2:52 pm
Personally, I’d love to see Schulers take over. They’re a local indepenedent with four (maybe five now) stores, but I love ’em. Pretty much the nicest-looking stores I’ve seen, and of course, they stock plenty of Jim Hines books 😉
Steve Buchheit
December 15, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
The more I learn about the business side, the more I realize what’s really killing books (specifically paper books) is the distribution model (and how it’s locked by a few players, the the stores are locked by only a few more players). However I’ve not seen the chink in the armor that can be exploited to allow someone in to change the landscape (as it’s dependent on both the people in the distribution companies and the store buyers).
Or as it’s now a part of the “Earth” by John Stewart promotion, “Available everywhere fine books are sold. Except for Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club because, apparently, their shite don’t stink.”
Michele Lee
December 15, 2010 @ 7:08 pm
I am anti-Borders going out of business at almost any cost, primarily though, because I work there. It drives me absolutely insane that corporate hundreds of miles away is making decisions about what our customers want. See, we don’t order books for our store, we are shipped boxes full of what corporate wants us to stock. I cannot believe that Robin McKinley’s Pegasus, for example, is not in stores. WTH!
Clearly the book store is no longer meeting the needs of a wide array of customers, but having spent time walking around the store trying to entice people into playing with an ereader I can say that ebooks are NOT the answer. There are so many people who just don’t want ebooks at all. Beyond uninterested. Honestly there’s a lot of people who come in that just don’t want books at all. They buy movies or music or just a coffee.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is, because on my end it looks like it’s just not publishing as many books. Of course that’s blasphemy because I think about how many great titles I’d miss out on.
Also, I have to say the idea of indies running things isn’t great either since my experiences with the local indie story prove them to be very snobby and unfriendly to genre readers and writers.
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
I can certainly understand the desire to keep one’s job!
Thanks for that input. It’s particularly interesting to hear how many customers aren’t interested in e-readers. (Though it makes sense that the customers most interested in e-books are less likely to be in bookstores, too.) I wonder if bookstores will be moving more toward carrying movies/music, and becoming more of an all-media outlet.
There’s certainly a range of independent bookstores. Our local store is awesome, but there’s one a town over that I just refuse to go back to as either an author or a reader…
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 7:41 pm
Heh. Some of mine have actually made it into Walmart, so I’m not going to gripe about them 🙂 But yes, there are some bottlenecks in the pipeline between author/publisher and reader that are … frustrating.
Jim C. Hines
December 15, 2010 @ 7:44 pm
If you’re ever in Lansing or Grand Rapids, I recommend Schuler Books. They’re an independent bookstore, but they’re wonderful — as well-stocked as B&N, good at taking care of customers … I wish there was a way for them to buy B&N 🙂
I wonder how much of the trends you’ve been seeing are due to the financial troubles of the chains, and how much is just local mismanagement.
The ease of access is definitely one of the advantages to electronic readers and online sales, and there’s just a lot to be said for convenience.
David Y
December 15, 2010 @ 9:36 pm
Jim: Since you mentioned them, in Canada we are reduced to just one big chain. Chapters was the larger chain, but Indigo bought it (and Coles and WH Smith) and part of the deal were conditions imposed by the government that, for some reason, the new entity would have to close some stores if there were too many in an area or something. Before the merger, we had Coles and Smiths in two big malls plus Chapters and Indigo. The mall near us now has no bookstore and the larger mall has a Coles and the Indigo was closed. (Coles is sort of like Waldenbooks). At the same time there was a shakeout and a number of smaller chains and small indies disappeared.
Lately the stores have been rebuilt with a large children’s play area (not a children’s book area). Also relevant: I used to be on good terms with the person that oversaw the fiction (and science fiction) area of our local store. An edict came down from head office that Fantasy and Science Fiction were to be segregated. We all know that the dividing line there is hazy and disputable. You can now find one book in one category and its sequel in the other. Then H.O. decided that they would determine which books a store socked.
Sorry, rant now over.
Kevin Sonney
December 15, 2010 @ 10:44 pm
I’m ambivalent about the buyout – retail industries usually have three major players, and when one fails or gets taken over, another will take it’s place. We’ve seen this a lot in the last 20 years with department stores (and the rise of Wal*Mart & Target).
That being said, the buy/don’t buy isn’t a national decision, but a store-by-store decision, since we can go to three different B&N stores in this area, and see some similar and some different stock in each one. My girlfriend (an author herself) noticed this when doing the same sort of “ninja” signing around here.
I’m picky, I’m guessing - Dylan R. E. Moonfire
December 16, 2010 @ 12:00 am
[…] usually has the lowest price. That set off a few thoughts of mine, but then Jim C. Hines made this post about having only one place to buy something. Well, he mentioned that everything can be found on […]
zollmaniac
December 16, 2010 @ 4:49 pm
Of course they’d merge… because my school’s bookstore was JUST converted to a Barnes and Noble.
zollmaniac
December 16, 2010 @ 4:56 pm
I know eBooks aren’t the answer, but I will say this… I was very much an anti-eReader person. I hated the idea – the mere thought of it – and demanded the physical book to be in my hands.
Then my wife bought me a nookColor and I’ve read more NOW than I have previously. I think it is the ease in which I can carry books around AND it’s nice to not have to worry about shelf space (which I have very little of). I love my eBooks and even have read some books I probably would never have otherwise. I’ll probably still buy books too (For instance, I wouldn’t trade an eBook for our collection of Hardcover Harry Potters), but I really do think the nookColor has expanded my enjoyment of just reading in general. I carry that thing with me everywhere. I do mean everywhere… I think my co-workers give me weird looks when I take it into the bathroom.
Not to mention that when I think of a book I want start reading, I don’t have to goto the store to buy it. I just pop on my nook, buy it, download it… begin reading.
I’m sure eBooks aren’t for everyone, but I believe that a vast majority of people are like me and just don’t like the idea of it… and don’t have a good way of testing it out without spending a few hundred dollars first.
I’ve been converted. Never thought I would be.
Jim C. Hines
December 16, 2010 @ 7:22 pm
So it’s YOUR fault, eh?
Jim C. Hines
December 16, 2010 @ 7:23 pm
Sounds like a similar rant to my own, and I’m sorry to hear it.
Jim C. Hines
December 16, 2010 @ 7:25 pm
That’s great that you’re reading more. I loaded the iBooks app on my new phone, downloaded a half-dozen books, and haven’t looked at them since. But I don’t know if it would be different with a dedicated e-reading device.
The convenience of instant download would be awfully nice. Do you think it’s the portability that got you reading more often? The fact that you always have your library there at your fingertips? It seems like there’s more to it, when you talk about how it’s expanded your enjoyment of reading in general.
zollmaniac
December 17, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
It’s completely the portability of it. I wasn’t all that impressed with the ipad that my wife got, but the size of the nookColor is perfect for me. It’s like caring a ~300 page paper back around with you, but its like 100 books instead of just one, and the pages don’t get messed up every time you set it down.
Previously, I would read a book in bed and that was pretty much it. Now, I carry the nook with me everywhere and read even if I just have 5 minutes to do it in.
Also, its really handy with the little one. She doesn’t care much about the picture books (although they are REALLY cool to me… she’ll probably like it when she’s a bit older), but she also can’t rip out pages or take out my book marks.
Plus, I’ve started using it to do some editing work on my own work. I use Calibre to convert my book to an epub and then I can bookmark section, highlight and make notes… its pretty cool.