Two big news items today in Quill and Quire.
Random House Canada has started selling books directly to consumers off its website and Indigo Books & Music (including Chapters and Coles) has started stocking self-published authors.
Why are these two things important?
Canadian publishers have been slow to enter the ecommerce game because booksellers see it as a betrayal. Traditionally publishers have sold titles to booksellers who then sell books to readers. Booksellers are the middleman in this model, and when publishers start selling directly to consumers it cuts them out.
In order to have a healthy industry, I believe publishers do need to support booksellers. At the same time, booksellers need to get with the program. Books are the #2 online purchase (travel is #1). Online booksales account for 1-5% of a publisher’s total sales.
On the one hand it’s big potatoes, on the other it’s not.
The trend I see is this: people are migrating online to discover new titles, they are no longer wandering into a store and looking for advice from the bookseller. The display tables and staff picks still work, but people are also using the internet to qualify book suggestions. For example, my friend recommends a book to me at a party. I think it sounds interesting. Instead of going to a bookstore, finding it on the shelf (when it may not be in stock), or talking to the bookseller, I google the title. I look at the author website or the publisher site or I look at Amazon. If I do decide to buy the book, I go into the store. This is how it works now. But booksellers aren’t supporting their websites, are doing little to capture the interest of their local community, and are losing the opportunity to draw people into their stores or to purchase titles from them online. This is why publishers are stepping into that space.
Indigo selling self-published authors.
This is interesting because the self-publishing market is expanding rapidly. There are lots of people out there with book ideas, publishers are slow to react in terms of turn-around time on a book, and publishers are highly selective in what they want to publish. Indigo stocking these titles is a huge step forward because as I mentioned above online book sales are still relatively small in Canada, in-store placement goes a long way. The interesting twist in this story is that Indigo is stocking self-published authors who have signed a deal with iUniverse: Americaís ìleader in supported self-publishing.î American, eh?
The suggestion is that Canadian authors using iUniverse will be the ones stocked in Indigo, but I wonder why Indigo isn’t supporting a Canadian company like Trafford instead of an American company. Perhaps more Canadians use iUniverse?
More likely, iUniverse has authors who are willing to pay a couple thousand dollars to get their books into Indigo–into Indigo and onto a display table. In traditional publishing, publishers pay for placement. It’s like a grocery store: end caps on the aisles, key placement at the front of a store, etc. If iUniverse can generate the funds from self-published authors, they can take a percentage of that and pass the rest over to Indigo as placement dollars. A good deal for both companies. I suspect that Trafford doesn’t see themselves in that game, but iUniverse is willing to capitalize on the relationship with a Canadian chain, which then sets the stage (if it isn’t already the case) and makes them look like a good partner to US chain stores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.)–much bigger dollars.
I don’t know enough about it to comment further, but I think it’s an interesting story to watch. If anyone has more details, fill me in.
