On Feb. 26, Publishers Weekly hosted its first discussion series of 2014 with a panel featuring Andy Laties, Store Manager at Bank Street Bookstore, Kim Wylie, VP Deputy Director of Sales at PGW, and Mary Beth Thomas, VP of Sales at HarperCollins. PW’s Jim Milliott moderated.
Bringing together a representative from retail, distribution, and publishing, the panel addressed questions related to the pros and cons of traditional seasonal lists from 3 different angles. In the end, though, the differences between the publisher viewpoint and the distributor’s viewpoint were negligible. Both Wylie and Thomas described the rhythms at their companies and expressed similar convictions that the extensive time to market ensures that a book is at its most ready—properly edited, positioned, packaged, timed, and ready to benefit from a coherent and well-planned marketing campaign.
Laties defined seasons and seasonality from a retail perspective, pointing out that, while the holiday season is clearly the most critical for many booksellers, those in vacation areas or coastal areas, might have very different peak selling seasons. But when questioned as to whether publishers might spread out their titles more evenly throughout the year, he replied that one of the reasons the current structure works is that booksellers don’t have time to be making buying decisions all year long and it’s convenient that the heavy fall publishing lists are presented in early summer when store traffic is often light.
While the arguments for the usual practice of two or three seasons were convincing—and both Wylie and Thomas suggested that the seasonal approach created essential deadlines without which chaos would certainly reign—clearly the enormous increase in “drop-in” titles points to some frustration with the usual timetables. Wylie said about 5% of the titles they sell each year are drop-ins; based on a rough title count of 2000, that means 100 or so each year. Harper’s numbers were even higher; Thomas said they do about 1100 adult titles and 600 children’s titles each year and roughly 250 are what they call “add-ons.”
Both described the systems in place to ensure that the rush to market was truly warranted, but conceded that opinions from sales do not always prevail. Laties confessed that he definitely misses a good number of these late titles and suggested that is true of many booksellers. Both Wylie and Thomas admitted that even keeping B&N informed is an arduous task, so it is obvious that there are many cracks into which an additional title might fall. And then there’s the issue of “open-to-buy.” If the dollars for a given month have been allocated to the titles that were originally presented, then it is going to take a very compelling reason why a bookseller should place a significant order for whatever title is being pitched as essential.
Interestingly, the online digital catalog Edelweiss, used throughout the industry these days, works to both enable late changes and add-ons by providing constantly updated information, as well as offering a vehicle for abandoning the traditional seasonal catalog. So the reasons that publishers still work within the seasonal framework is not in order to produce printed catalogs that showcase all the new releases, but rather to group a portion of the publishers’ output into lists that the sales people can present on their swings through the territory. These arbitrary groupings of titles define the selling process; even if there is any number of additional books thrown into the mix throughout the year, the sales people have the majority of the new titles grouped into a set number of sales cycles.
The panel generated a number of questions, mostly surrounding the issues related to add-on titles, which are clearly a frustration for both publishers and retailers. But an acceptance of the inevitability of additional titles is what has allowed the old system to remain in place. There is clearly recognition that there has to be a way to reduce the speed to market when needed, and while that will inevitably give rise to some abuse of that privilege, publishers have created systems for handling these so that the basic ways of doing business can proceed as usual. So, the final answer was quite clear: publishing seasons are still very relevant, if only so that they can be flouted.
