This evening I was in the Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center. Upstairs, looking for State Department memoirs. (The why of that is another story.) Anyway, instead of finding memoirs, (there were very few), I found myself standing before packed bins of discounted books. I mean really discounted books — in many cases books by bestselling authors. Some of these books were only a few months’ old. Hardcovers originally priced at $20+ now selling for $5-$6! I was stunned — and so disheartened. It really drove home the point about the slump in book sales, that books like these — so many beautiful, fascinating books — are going unsold, unread, and virtually ignored by the public.
Why? How could books even by bestselling authors end up on the discount pile so soon after being published?
I mean I know there’s always been a remainders system. I know there’s such a thing as overprinting, too. But something more was afoot here. There were a lot of books that … well, they just shouldn’t have been in those bins of books with slashed prices.
Of course, there’s the state of the economy. We all know it’s bad. But general wisdom holds that the book business is recession proof, that it even thrives during down times because it provides an economic form of entertainment. Obviously, not anymore. Is it because things are really that bad in the economy, or that people just generally don’t read anymore. I’m sure it’s all those things. I wondered, too, if it wasn’t the price of the books to begin with. I mean, if you can say that one reason the book biz was recession proof was because it offered a form of entertainment cheaper than a movie ticket, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot when you raise the price of a book to well beyond that of a movie ticket.
Let’s see, the price of a movie ticket here ranges from $10 to $13. The price of a book (trade or hardcover), ranges from $12.95 to $19.95. Hmm… So the argument that people will buy books because they’re cheaper than movie tickets really should be thrown out the window (around here, at least). Meanwhile, of course, high-priced books are competing with the the tons of free books available for people to borrow or swap or download.
Unfortunately, the cost of doing business seems to be forcing publishers to keep their prices unappetizingly high. Which is a shame, because it seems to lead to a downward spiral. Fewer sales lead to a need to recoup more money, which leads to a decision to raise prices, which leads again to even fewer sales. So the booksellers buy the books, then either return them (more loss for the publisher) or sell them at rockbottom prices (setting lower expectations for buyers).
There’s got to be a better way.
