Reflections on the Publ ishing Scene

Zeno's Arrow: Or the Reason the Oft-Described Distribution Problem of the Book Trade Remains Insoluble

Richard Abel

Z eno, styled by Aristotle as the inventor of dialectic, formulated the fa- mous logical problem of the flight of an arrow. He showed that an arrow

would journey half the distance to its target in a specified time interval, it would next travel half the remaining distance in half the initial time interval, etc., etc. As a consequence, the arrow would never, even in infinite time, reach its target, for it would always remain half of some infinitesimally small inter- val distant.

A stranger to the book trade, if asked to spend a few hours reading the book- trade journals of the leading free-market, book-producing countries published in recent months, could only conclude that two ongoing quarrels between book publishers and booksellers seemed in dire need of resolution. If then asked to sample sixty years of back issues of the same journals, the stranger would be forced to conclude that he or she had discovered an actual example of the truth of Zeno's Arrow or Paradox. The stranger would be forced to this conclusion by virtue of the fact that neither of these two quarrels, the sources of considerable and consistent controversy badly souring an essential relation- ship, had been resolved in all those years. The arrow had after all these years failed to reach the target of resolution.

The two seemingly intractable problems giving rise to the stranger's conclu- sion are:

1. The return of books by booksellers to publishers for full credit, referred to in earlier days as consignment sales.

2. The discounts offered booksellers by book publishers.

In substantial measure, both quarrels have their roots in the same but more fundamental problem: Neither book publishers nor booksellers know for whom many books are published, and hence, to w h o m they are to be sold.

This problem particularly and disproportionately besets the "trade book" and mass-market paperback markets. The former is a word constructed by a

Reflections 67

kindly Providence to designate that kind of book which seems best fit for the typical retail or trade bookstore. The fact that this problem is so largely identified with the trade book and mass-market paperback segments of the total book trade is hardly surprising, for both classes of books are disproportionately devoted to books of entertainment.

Albert N. Greco published in the Fall 1992 issue of Publishing Research Quar- terly what is probably the most recent, careful, and thoughtful analysis of book returns in a paper entitled "U.S. Book Returns, 1984-1989." Despite the coarse- ness of the book categories he was forced to use by virtue of the way in which the initial data were collected, the preeminent place of books of entertainment in the book-return picture is clearly manifest.

The only other category of books which even approaches that of books of entertainment in driving returns is that of college textbooks. At first glance this far from flattering place of textbooks in the returns sweepstakes seems to vitiate the assertion that returns derive in significant measure from books for which neither the publisher nor the seller know the target audience. After all, the content of the vast percentage of various college courses is fairly well set, and textbook publishers have in the last couple of generations carefully honed their product to the handful of approaches by which this content may be taught. In short, textbook publishers clearly understand for whom they pub- lish any given title, and college bookstore textbook buyers clearly understand to whom they will sell any given text title. The crux of the apparent textbook anomaly is readily explained by the unique characteristics of the college text- book market. There is sufficient market uncertainty as to the number of students who will enroll in a particular course taught in a particular way that college textbook publishers print and college bookstore buyers stock textbooks at the upper end of enrollment projections. They do so to avoid being trapped in the unwanted, and in the long-term destructive, position of being perceived as crippling the educational objectives of students by having too few of a re- quired pedagogic tool on hand.

Books have for centuries been one of the principal containers in which a variety of kinds of purveyors of words and images have packaged their wares. In all likelihood, only the theater in all its forms and the public market have proved more ample channels for the distribution of entertainment than has the codex-book. The extraordinary versatility of the codex as a container--indeed as a mega-container--has led to its widespread utilization in the service of a remarkable number of distinct social purposes. Consider: A shopper in a com- prehensive marketplace can purchase codices containing no text but only im- ages, those containing only text but no images, as well as those which are one kind or another of a hybrid of these "pure" forms--all of them called "books." Yet the term book carries the clear primary meaning of a codex made up largely of text, the occasional images having been embedded therein most usually to elucidate the text. But this differentiation clears up only the most outrageous accretions which have been annexed to the word.

Within the context of the primary meaning of the word book, more subtle

68 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter I993-94

confusions remain, confusions which have not infrequently bedeviled rational consideration of the book for several centuries. These finer confusions also trace back to the extraordinary versatility of the codex as a container. In short, all manner of authorial and editorial purposes and objectives from the finest to the basest are readily served by the codex as a thing primarily of text.

For the present purposes of trying to unravel what it is that has militated against the resolution of these two issues, a distinction between two very broad, general categories of books must be made:

1. Those devoted to entertaining.

2. All other book genera.

Books of entertainment are not confined to the run-of-the-miU fictional writ- ings aimed at the mass-market audience but include great numbers of nonfic- tion genera as well. Among the latter, broad categories can readily be identified, such as humor; what is best called "true confessions," which includes most autobiographical or biographical accounts of currently-in-the-news political, movie, TV, popular music, etc. "stars"; by analogy with "true confessions," "true crime"; many of the titles published on currently "hot" subjects, diet, the environment, etc.

The markets for these two broad classes of books are, save at a not inconsid- erable margin of overlap, quite distinct. The markets for the nonentertainment genera--the classics, literature, history, the social sciences, textbooks, STM books, etc.--are, save in a few notable exceptions (dictionaries, encyclopedias, lower-level textbooks, etc.), small and made up of fairly readily identifiable categories or classes of book-buyers/readers. The markets for books of enter- tainment are, on the other hand, characteristically larger and relatively diffuse. That is to say, the buyers/readers of such books are, by and large, not mem- bers of any clearly identifiable class or group. Even in those cases in which a class of buyers/readers of one form of entertainment book or another can be more or less readily identified, their buying behavior is highly erratic and, hence, unpredictable. As a consequence of this latter characteristic of entertain- ment-book buyers/readers, the number of copies of quite similar titles sold varies extraordinarily widely, not only within a publishing season, but from one season to the next. In short, this class of readers is virtually unpredictable in their book-buying/reading behavior.

Obviously, the marketing techniques employed by book publishers to reach book buyers/readers in two such distinct markets are radically different. In the case of the various genera of nonentertainment books, the markets are reached, in substantial measure, by highly targeted means--direct mail, adver- tising in specialty periodicals, attendance at association or professional meet- ings, specialty book clubs, etc. Only a small, though varying, fraction of nonentertainment books move through general trade bookstores.

Books of entertainment, by contrast, are marketed by utilizing the marketing

Reflections 69

methods employed in the selling of other mass-market products. In short, books of this class are sold, in the words of the famed controversy conducted in the pages of The Bookseller some years ago, like soap. The publisher is ex- pected, whatever the final sales outcome, to promote such titles and their authors to the mass audience using mass-market sales techniques in such a way as to "sell the title through" the bookstores. The latter are viewed (and many of them concur in so viewing their role), as virtually a channel through which the books flow to buyers/readers, akin to retailers of many other mass- market products who compete on the basis of location, price, breadth of selec- tion, and other non-product-specific attributes.

The sole intent of the publishers of such titles, one largely shared by the bookselling community, is not simply to produce "bestsellers." Both sectors of the book trade, as well as the derivative circle of mass-circulation paper and magazine reviewers, manifestly relish the bestseller horse race, for the bestsellers and their authors are the stars of this particular entertainment forum. But no industry can survive only on its stars; a vast body of "also rans" is needed simply to have a horse-race, as well as stringers, hangers-on, and supporting members. So while the vast body of the class of books of entertainment will never reach the bestseller charts, they yet remain members in good standing of their class and participants in the game.

In anticipation of a successful "sell through" of all their new entertainment titles, publishers load up the bookstores each season with stock adequate to support such a hoped-for outcome. This practice is fully accepted by the vast percentage of bookstore buyers, the occasional outcries about the practice by one or another buyer notwithstanding.

Most bookstores are no more familiar with the reading interests of the vast bulk of their customers than are publishers when they sign for an entertain- ment book manuscript. In short, and again like makers and dealers in soap, all those involved with entertainment books are, at base, playing the mass-market game: "There must be those out there who will buy this book in sufficient numbers to justify publishing and selling it." The mass-market game, insofar as books are concerned, has been growing in size, complexity, and sheer num- b e r s - n u m b e r s of titles, dollars, books involved, etc.--for some years. This growth has derived, in part, from the entry of larger, more heavily capitalized publishing and bookselling groups and, in part, from the increased competitive pressure arising from the appearance of larger-scale players in the ballpark.

This multidirectional growth has caught up book returns in its tidal sweep. The rate of returns as a percentage of books initially sold seems, in fact, to be increasing more rapidly than other factors in this wave of growth. (Such an assertion derives almost entirely from anecdotal accounts made by various publishers over a period of years for the simple reason that dependable industrywide statistics devoted to returns are, if anything, even less trustwor- thy than measurements of other aspects of a remarkably ill-quantified economic sector.) If this increased rate of returns---one hears of rates up to 50 percent- -

70 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 1993-94

is, in fact, even approximately true, the inescapable conclusion is, of course that competitive pressures have simply led to increasing the size of initial orders of titles for which neither the publishers nor the booksellers have any substantial notion as to whom they will sell the books. But is this irrational behavior any surprise?

Surely not when one contemplates the response of the book trade to the Cheney Report in the sixty years since its appearance. Like the Greek thinkers or Shakespeare, the Cheney Report is oft approvingly quoted but is rarely taken as a guide to reasonable conduct. Cheney clearly described and docu- mented the congeries of related problems which beset the book trade in the first third of this century--and continue to beset it today. Not that any of his findings were discoveries unique to his study. Concerned, careful observers had for years previous commented upon one or more of the cluster of prob- lems which led to the inefficient and costly distribution that has bedeviled the trade for a century or more. Cheney's greatest claim upon our attention is that he explicated in a systematic and coherent fashion all the problems, not simply a randomly selected handful.

The base difficulty, as Cheney concluded and as I have tried to recapitulate, derives from the compounding effect of the twin facts of publishing and stock- ing large quantities of titles for which neither publisher nor bookseller knows the market and the everlasting pursuit of "bestsellers." Both seem and have seemed for a century or more irrational undertakings. But those who have offered various proposals from time to time to resolve what appear to be the chronic distribution difficulties besetting the book trade are, in fact, the be- nighted. The problem with these proposals is that they are based on funda- mentally unsound analyses. Like Zeno, they have employed a defective means of inquiry and so arrived at an incorrect conclusion.

The hard and inescapable fact is that a simply enormous body of book buy- ers and readers wish to read only books of entertainment or wish to do so as occasional "light" reading. Most of this class of readers do not wish to read "good" books. The codex has long been used as a container for entertainment and will continue to be so used for the foreseeable future. The fundamental oversights of those proposing various means for "correcting" the problem of returns are:

. The failure to distinguish between codices devoted to entertainment and those devoted to the conveyance of information and the explica- tion of knowledge. Or to put the matter in another way, books of entertainment are not, despite the similarity in packaging, the same as the other genera of books. They are a wholly different product shar- ing a greater similarity to movies, television, popular magazines, etc. than to the world of culture and learning. And equally the publishers and sellers of books of entertainment are a part of a different indus- try. The growing place of the book of entertainment only clarifies and parallels the widening gulf separating codices devoted to entertain-

Reflections 71

.

ment from those devoted to the traditional concerns of cultural knowledge and inquiry. But the diagnosis and prognosis of this ful- minating cultural schizophrenia is the stuff of another forum.

The failure to properly appreciate the sheer unpredictability and fick- leness of popular taste. Thus, neither publisher nor bookseller can predict with any degree of certitude which books of entertainment will sell or in what quantities in any season.

Further, too many fortunes have been made by successfully appealing to such mass-market tastes for any but the most obtuse to fail to perceive the positive economic incentives favoring publishing for and selling to such tastes.

Before leaving the matter of returns a couple of other unsustainable asser- tions commonly advanced should be identified:

. The notion that the recent growth of a significant wholesaling sector between publishers and booksellers and the increasing dependence of bookstores upon such brokering organizations will go a long way toward solving the problem of returns. In fact, the source of returns is simply shifted to a greater or lesser degree from booksellers to whole- salers.

. The notion that the quite sophisticated sales tracking systems made possible by increasingly advanced and cheaper computer systems will prove an antidote to debilitating returns. The increased documenta- tion provided in the last century of fundamentally irrational practices has failed to make a dent in such practices. Computer documentation is in no way superior to that provided by Cheney sixty years ago. In short, neither more detailed documentation nor more sophisticated tracking can rationalize an affair so uncertain as the sale of entertain- ment.

So, at the end of the day, it seems that returns will remain an intractable problem of the book trade for the foreseeable future. For, in the last analysis, the publishing and selling of books of entertainment is a rational response to a book-reading/buying public, a significant fraction of which only seeks enter- tainment goods, not cultural goods. But that fraction is as fickle and unpredict- able as the winds.

The other seemingly intractable quarrel regularly beclouding the publisher/ bookseller relationship is that of discount. It also grows, in significant mea- sure, out of the fact that neither publisher nor bookseller knows for whom entertainment titles are published or sold. It must be noted at once that this quarreling over what the retailer must pay the producer for any product besets virtually ever other trade sector. It is quite simply a particular example of the age-old bickering between people as to how the pie is to be divided.

But this quarreling takes on an especially querulous tone in the book trade as

72 Publishing Research Quarterly / Winter 1993-94

compared to the trade in soap, for example. The cause of this difference is clear enough. Soap manufacturers do not place tens of thousands of brands of new soap on the market each season as do book publishers.

The question as to where and, more important, to whom tens of thousands of copies of these tens of thousands of new titles are to be sold every season is inexorably reflected in a sales uncertainty not known to soap producers and sellers. Publishers and sellers of books of entertainment live in a perpetual environment of meta-uncertainty unknown to soap manufacturers and sellers. As a consequence, the latter can simply bicker over who gets how much- -a simple exercise in greed. But neither the book publisher nor the bookseller can resort to arguments exclusively based on greed when both are playing in a massively unpredictable game.

The case for uncertainty in both camps is genuine enough. It has been re- peatedly estimated that about a third of all publishers lose money in any given year. The routine closing of bookstores, both independents and chains, gives ample testimony to the uncertainties associated with bookselling. Another common rule of thumb regularly recounted in the book trade clearly points to the class of books of entertainment as the leading, if not the exclusive, source of this meta-uncertainty. This piece of book trade lore has it that nine out of ten of those titles expected to be "big" books---those titles which the publisher hopes will, if not make the bestseller lists, at least sell several tens of thousands of copies within months of their appearance--lose money. The corollary, of course, is that one such title out of ten will make a profi t--and that of such a magnitude as to offset the losses on the other nine.

The book publishers, quite rationally therefore, endeavor to load up the bookstores with all such titles to spread this risk as widely as possible. The booksellers are willingly, in virtually all cases, co-opted in most of these thou- sands of rolls of the dice. And each season, with an astonishing kind of hyp- notic monotony, both partners in the game watch most of their bets fail. Then the returns begin. After this latter exercise is completed the players look at the enormous costs incurred or profits forgone in another round of wagers - -and fall to quarreling.

The quarrel has been ritualized into two recriminations, with variations ad libitum, scripted for both confederations of players. The booksellers accuse the publishers of betting on weak titles and failing to mount the promotion cam- paign needed to "sell t h rough ' - - t he latter a complaint joined in by virtually every author, augmenting the publisher's sense of uncertainty. The book pub- lishers are, at the same time, accusing the booksellers of not understanding their customers and of failing to "hand-sell" the books in the way expected of them--both complaints joined in by numerous customers aggravated at not having found books they particularly wanted, augmenting the bookseller's sense of uncertainty.

In such an aura of mutual meta-uncertainty exacerbated by mutual recrimi- nation, and confirmed by other parties, the quarrel escalates to the question of who should bear the principal costs associated with this speculative binge

Reflections 73

engaged in twice or thrice annually. The aura of meta-uncertainty surrounding the whole affair leads to a kind of paranoid quarrel which, at the end of the day, is irresolvable. So it will go on forever.

The publishing of large numbers of book titles in great quantities for which neither publisher nor seller can clearly identify the buyers or readers is unhap- pily a fact, a structural reality particularly and almost peculiarly associated with the trade in books of entertainment. As a direct and inseparable conse- quence, neither the problem of returns nor the problem of the division of sales between book publishers and booksellers will ever go away. While it flies in the face of the current ethos, which would prefer to believe in the scenario of Zeno's Paradox in which no one is ever hurt, there are, in fact, unresolvable quarrels. And we in the book trade have two in our midst.

Paul Kurtz

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