5 Better Inventory-Management Tips for Book Publishers

Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of New York-based The Idea Logical Company, offered book publishers a number of tips on making more intelligent inventory-management decisions at the 2008 Publishing Business Conference in New York. A better approach starts with regularly collecting and analyzing data that is available to each and every publisher, he said.

“Most of the major accounts to which publishers sell will provide you with data that will enable you to know what’s going on between your warehouse door and the end consumer, if you choose to know,” Shatzkin said. “And that information can be very, very useful both to increase your sales and to reduce your inventory exposure.”

In the hour-long session, Shatzkin offered a wealth of advice to the room of book publishers. Here are just five of his tips from the presentation.

1. It is not the unit cost of what you print that matters, it is the unit cost of what you sell.
This advice, said Shatzkin, came from his late father. The point? If you print books that you don’t sell, you’re not saving any money -- an important thing to keep in mind.

2. Get weekly feeds from your major accounts.
Collecting this data once a month is not often enough, Shatzkin says. Be sure you’re getting the information on a weekly basis. Possessing this data from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Baker & Taylor, Ingram and Amazon can give you a sense of “a substantial percentage of the inventory that’s in the supply chain -- well north of 50 percent, because independent stores aren’t holding that much inventory anymore,” Shatzkin said.

3. Once this data is being collected and organized, analyze it.
First, examine by account what their sell-through is by title. Then, on a quarterly basis by account, look at stock turn and inventory by section for your retailers. Also, track both sales and stock on a weekly basis.

4. Identify spikes.
Identify books that are selling beyond expectations. Keep an eye out for those “fast movers,” said Shatzkin.

5. Identify future returns.
These are the books with high stock and low sell-through. Look at your top 25 books in inventory at Barnes & Noble and Borders. If you see, for example, 1-percent sell-through on a title, “you can be sure that that’s a future problem,” Shatzkin said. “You might want to start to address it early, and you certainly want to address it if your own warehouse is short of [that title] and you might be reprinting. So it’s a very important thing to watch both your highs and your lows.”

An Alternative to Destroying Overruns: A Q&A with Books for Asia Director Melody Zavala

The Asia Foundation is providing publishers with an alternative to incinerating or pulping overruns and excess stock. Through its Books for Asia program, which the foundation started in 1954, publishers may instead donate these books for distribution to remote and impoverished areas throughout the Asian continent.

Books for Asia delivers nearly one million books and educational resources to 17 countries in Asia every year. Publishers that have already partnered with the program include McGraw-Hill, John Wiley and Sons, Scholastic, W.W. Norton, Island Press and Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Melody Zavala, director of Books for Asia, spoke with Book Business Extra about the San Francisco-based nonprofit’s work and how the U.S. book publishing community can get involved.


Book Business Extra: Why should publishers consider participating in this program?
Melody Zavala: … Three-quarters [of the world’s illiterate population] live in Asia and the Pacific region. So, there’s a real need to expand literature in Asia, and over the longer term, that can create markets for publishers. … We need to create a market for English-language materials. … English materials are valuable in Asia. They’re learning English, and it’s a path [to] their country’s economic success to have information of the world …. For publishers, this means contributing to [an area] where there is more [business] opportunity. …

Some of these donated materials may have exhausted their life in the States. Oftentimes, a new edition [of a book has been] published, and they don’t want to market [the old] one. … Here’s a whole other useful life for materials that a lot of effort went into creating. It’s more satisfying than pulping these books. … It also helps reduce the environmental footprint of the industry. And in a lot of the countries we work, they have a lot less, and they value the books even more. … For publishers, it’s win, win, win—they don’t have to dispose [of] the books, it benefits the world, and it benefits themselves.


Extra: How can publishers take part in this program?
Zavala: That’s the beauty of it. We make it easy for publishers … most everything is done by e-mail. First, we start with a brief phone or e-mail conversation to get a general idea of what kind of material a publisher has for donation and when the material was published. In general, we do not accept books published before 2002, though there are exceptions. Via e-mail, we ask the publisher to give us an “offer list”—a list of the actual books they are interested in donating. This list can be generated by the publisher’s own inventory system as long as it include titles, ISBN numbers, year of publication, and the quantity available for donation. We also provide a template that publishers can fill out if they prefer. Via e-mail, we return the list with a column that indicates the quantities we can accept by title. [Then,] the publisher instructs their warehouse to fulfill the order and send the books to our warehouse in San Leandro, Calif. We send the publisher an acknowledgment letter for tax purposes, and we e-mail their communications staff to make arrangements to link their logo and Web site to ours, if desired.

For publishers who have been prior donors, they simply periodically e-mail us an offer list, we reply with quantities and titles we can distribute, and so on. … We take a look at that and turn it around in a day. … Then we allocate it to the countries [and] distribute [it] through our field offices on the ground. There are no third parties. Instead of sending it to the pulp, [the publishers] send it to us.


Extra: What types of books are most in need there?
Zavala: The short answer is everything. The more refined answer is primary, secondary and university textbooks and children’s readers. We always need more materials. … A lot of the communities we work in are print poor. The community doesn’t have a lot of material for kids to develop that interest and love for reading. Beyond that—reference materials. Books for Asia is a program of The Asia Foundation … [and] lot of its programs deal with government and law. There’s a lot of work in the legal sector, engineering and medicine.


Extra: Are there any restrictions?
Zavala: The only thing we don’t use is religious material and anything that may be really sensitive. We stay away from romance drama and fiction. We have to remember that not everything we publish in the West would be appropriate. … Our field offices work with nonprofits on the ground, [and] they have a good feel for what they need. …


Extra: What challenges do you continue to face as an organization?
Zavala: Our real challenge is to keep attracting new publisher donors and to create ways to reach communities. Our mission is not to just donate material to institutions. We want to keep getting this information to places that cannot publish. We’re not undercutting the sales of publishers in anyway. We’re talking about countries like Borneo [and] the poor states in Malaysia. The materials have to reach there by boat. In addition to coming up with the material, we have to come up with [financial] donors to help us reach the most remote places. These places have conflict. These are the most expensive [places] to reach, but they are the most in need. …

College Bookstores to Offer Ebooks through Kiosks

Mac Slocum, September 26, 2008

Seven college bookstores will soon offer movies and ebooks through in-store kiosks. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Movies will be the first product offered at the kiosks, which are scheduled to appear at seven stores next month. The plan is to add digital textbooks to the kiosks starting next summer, says Charles Schmidt, a spokesman for the association.

A kiosk-based system targeted at college students will struggle to compete against digital options like iTunes and P2P networks, but Ars Technica says movies are the first step in a broader initiative:

... it's part of a plan to get electronic distribution channels up and running in advance of the availability of digital textbook material. If all goes well, the first digital textbooks and supplementary class material will appear there starting next summer. Left unsaid, however, was whether this material would be protected by DRM; it's a safe bet that it will.

Publishing and the New Yorker

So all week I kept hearing about this article that foretold the death of publishing as we know it. I first heard it from an editor at work, then several NYU alumni at our meetup. Each time I made a mental note to Google it as soon as I could and then forgot, given the crazy week I had. So after forgetting it for the third time, I was surprised when my husband pulled our copy of The New Yorker out of the recycling bin (and I have to admit that I didn't even remember that we have a subscription) so that I could read this great article about publishing.

So I read it...Most of what it mentioned I had read about elsewhere to various degrees, and I didn't find it alarming at all. Yes, publishing as we know is is changing, not dying, but what industry can survive so long without evolving? And yes, print may not remain the primary medium for the industry, but that does not mean that it will only be a rare and expensive commodity either. What if instead of POD as a transition, it becomes another option for the consumer? What if the consumer of the future can easily decide which medium he or she prefers to have their content delivered on, and that the price difference is so small, if any, that everyone can afford it all?

I think instead of people worrying about something that will never die, that they embrace the change and the freedom it could eventually give us, both as publishing professionals who won't have to worry about ever-increasing cost of paper and production and as consumers. And if this new model means consumers pay before a book is "produced," whether in print or online, and then cannot return them, than the publishing industry will actually be healthy and strong enough to focus not on cost of goods sold, but on content.

Perseus Announces New “One-Stop” Digital Publishing Service

The Perseus Books Group, publisher and provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent publishers, announced this week the launch of a new digital publishing service called Constellation, which will enable independent publishers to offer their content in a variety of digital formats—including e-books, online content sampling services and digital files for print-on-demand—through a number of vendors. The service will be available to all independent publishers associated with The Perseus Books Group, including those owned by the group and joint-venture partners as well as those served by Consortium, Perseus Distribution and PGW.

The service already has partnership agreements in place with a number of technology companies, including Amazon (for the Kindle and “Search Inside the Book”), BookSurge, Sony, Google, OverDrive, Ebrary, BarnesandNoble.com (for “See Inside”), Lightning Source and Edwards Brothers (for digital printing). According to Perseus, additional partner announcements are anticipated.

Publishers can select which services, as well as which vendors, they want to use. Constellation negotiates agreements with these vendors on behalf of the publisher. Publishers then load print-ready PDFs to Constellation’s Web interface or provide them via a portable file transfer. (Constellation will also help with the digitization of files for publishers who don’t have them available.)

The Perseus Web site (http://www.perseusdigital.com/constellation/home.php) offers a detailed explanation of how Constellation works and what is required of publishers.

“Up until now, the full range of digital opportunities has been mostly confined to large corporate publishers owned by multinational corporations, and many independent publishers have been shut out,” says David Steinberger, Perseus president and CEO. “Constellation will level the playing field for independent publishers and make it possible to generate new revenues from ‘long tail’ content.”

“The Perseus Books Group is in a position to bring together independent publishers and create opportunities for us that would be much more difficult if we were on our own,” says Munro Magruder, associate publisher of New World Library, a PGW client.

Perseus COO Joe Mangan states in a letter posted on Perseus’ Web site: “This powerful technology- and vendor-agnostic service creates one, central repository and service organization that can help you manage your titles through their life cycle, leveraging—where appropriate—online marketing and sampling, e-book distribution and sales, short print run (short print runs to stock), and true print-on-demand (print only to order).”

North Plains is providing the digital asset management software to support Constellation. “As a company whose mission is to enable independent publishers to reach their potential, The Perseus Books Group is in a unique position to empower ‘long tail’ content owners to generate new revenues from the digital world,” says Hassan Kotob, president & CEO of North Plains.

Will Sony's new device spell the end of the traditional book?

IT IS small enough to fit in a handbag or a large pocket – but contains the contents of around 160 books.

The race to convert book-lovers to electronic novels will intensify on Thursday with the launch of the £199 Sony Reader.

But writers are split on whether the gadget will ever challenge the traditional paperback as the favoured way to read a novel.

Roughly the size of an average paperback, it has 200 megabytes, enough to store 160 books of average length, and more capacity can be added in the form of memory cards. The device can also store and play back pictures and music files.

By connecting it to a home computer, owners will be able to download "ebooks" from the website of the bookshop chain Waterstone's, which will be selling the device.

The Reader uses display technology called electronic ink or "e-ink", meaning it uses power only when pages are turned. A single battery life should be enough for 1,680 page turns.

Each Reader will be sold with a CD containing 100 free books, including Dracula, Great Expectations, Pride And Prejudice and Romeo And Juliet.

Waterstone's has managed to beat Amazon – which has been selling its Kindle device in the United States for several months – to the British market.

Toby Bourne, category manager at Waterstone's, said: "We are very impressed with the Reader and think our customers will be too.

"We're working with publishers to develop the best range of ebooks – classics and new bestsellers."

However, writers were divided over the invention.

Toby Young, author of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, said: "In the long run, electronic books will benefit writers, creating an easier way to enable first-time authors to get their work in front of the public. That will be a revolutionary change."

But Nick Hornby, whose books include Fever Pitch and About A Boy, was less convinced.

He wrote recently: "There is currently much consternation in the industry about the future of the conventional book, but my suspicion is that it will prove to be more tenacious than the CD.

"Readers of books like books, whereas music fans never had much affection for CDs."

Waterstone's said it had pre-orders for thousands of Readers, but admitted it was struggling to finalise pricing of ebooks.

A spokesman said: "We aim to make them cheaper than their physical counterparts, although people will have to pay VAT.

"We plan to have every new title available the day it launches, so you should be able to download everything you see in store."

Earlier this month, the CitiGroup financial services company predicted Amazon would sell 380,000 electronic books during 2008.

However, Amazon is notoriously reticent about publishing figures and some experts believe there could be as few as 50,000 electronic books in circulation.

Marc Lambert, chief executive officer of the Scottish Book Trust, said: "It's definitely a future; I don't know if it's the future.

"I think it's a good thing. It is still reading, it is just another platform, like the iPod, which has come into rapid use. It does take the tactile pleasure away of turning a book's pages, but at the same time it's making the book accessible on a different kind of platform.

"It can never replace the book as it was invented, because people will always enjoy the physical experience of reading a book, which you are going to miss on this."