From Shelf Awareness Pro:
Baker & Taylor has made it official: it is leaving the wholesale retail book market. The move was hinted at when it became public late last year that the company was in talks to sell its retail operations to Ingramand then in the departure over the last few months of key retail staff members. B&T will focus on its traditional core business of servicing libraries, as well as publisher services.
In the announcement yesterday, B&T and parent company Follett said that “over the coming weeks,” B&T will “wind down our activities and related services selling books wholesale to retailers,” aiming to complete the process by July 15. (B&T will, however, continue to service college bookstores managed by Follett Higher Education.)
As part of the move, B&T is closing its warehouses in Somerville, N.J., and Reno, Nev., by the end of the year. The company’s office in Somerville will stay open.
B&T and Follett called the decision to exit the wholesale retail business “not an easy one. The retail market has become an increasingly difficult market in which to operate. Operating costs have continued to rise which, compounded with customers’ expectations for same or next-day delivery, has put strong pressure on the supply chain and operating profit. The leadership at Baker & Taylor and Follett studied options that might help our retail performance and ultimately determined that the best course for Baker & Taylor would be to devote our resources to our public library and publisher services businesses.”
In a letter to publishers, the companies said, “By focusing on our core competency as the leading, innovative supplier to public libraries, we know our future will be a bright one. We are excited to partner with you as we improve literacy and learning in the communities we serve around the county and globe.”
. . . .
B&T added that it is adjusting “algorithms to focus on the fulfillment of the library business and allow stock to sell down. Stock transfers between facilities will also occur when necessary. Any remaining stock will be returned to our publishers.”
B&T’s move has caused great consternation among indie booksellers. Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, commented: “The competitive wholesale environment has played an important role in the resurgence of indie bookstores over the past several years in the United States. Baker & Taylor’s decision to no longer serve the trade market is very bad news for indie booksellers and, in the long run, will not be good for consumers. ABA intends to work as closely as we can with other industry partners to ensure that indie bookstores can continue to access inventory in as cost-effective and rapid a manner as possible to allow member stores to continue to serve their customers. However, there’s no way to sugarcoat it–today’s news is not good.”
Bookseller comments haven’t been sugarcoated, either. On Twitter, for example, Hannah Oliver Depp, owner of Loyalty Bookstore, Washington, D.C., called the change “a f*cking tragedy for our industry. Having one major wholesaler is the loss of competitive pricing and swift customer service that indies depend on to stay ahead.”
Subtext Books, St. Paul, Minn., wrote on Twitter: “This is truly terrible news for our industry. Limiting wholesale distribution to one company is bad for the ecosystem of literacy, and bad economics. Immediately, this means that our mid-week special orders will likely not show up on Friday, but on Monday instead.”
Link to the rest at Shelf Awareness Pro
This will also be a devastating blow to any trad-pub author who has a new release scheduled for May-July. B&T will be shipping back unopened cartons of books by the truckload. The sell-through numbers on those titles will be insanely bad. That kind of thing can end a (trad-pub) author’s career. #goindie
But nothing tastes sweeter to a publisher than blaming the author for books failing to sell when the books didn’t have a chance to hit the market to begin with.
IT’S ALL AMAZON’S FAULT!
It probably is. In many cases we hear bookstore owners say that they can obtain books from Amazon for less than their wholesale cost.
And faster.
With Amazon now talking one day free delivery for PRIME, it’s easy to see where Follett would get spooked by the logistics of it. Ingram might be able to do it but B&T is too small to support the number of depots it would require. Alternately, they might have to buy B&N and its logistics backbone. Might not be economically viable for tgem.
Also of note: Amazon has a less publicized but massive B2B operation and their same day delivery options are centered on the bigger cities, precisely the places the ABA stores cluster in. Ingram should be looking over their shoulder.