Here in the UK the book business has gone absolutely potty over the latest, and last, Harry Potter book. Everywhere you look, the book is being sold at half its recommended retail price, or even less! If you were an alien visitor newly arrived on Earth, or someone whose been in a coma for the last eight years, you'd assume this 'Harry Potter' book had turned out to be the industry's biggest flop, with hundreds of thousands of copies facing the mulching machine unless they can find an owner.
Au contraire.
A recent article on how the last Harry Potter book, despite being phenomenally popular, is making no one any money at all, shows how bleedin' ludicrous things have gotten in the world of publishing in the UK. With this last installment of HP, it should jolly well be feast time for booksellers - selling the book by the wheelbarrow for loads of loverly profit. Instead, everybody seems to be competing with each other to hand copies of it over to the public...at the cheapest price, and the greatest loss.
How did this industry allow itself to get so silly?
By comparison, lets take a look at how some other industries cope with a hot product that everyone wants.
Video games: The Wii, Nintendo's latest console is taking the world by storm; everyone wants to grab a Wii. But, do we see GAME giving the console away at a below-than-wholesale-price? Nope. Instead, they're making a nice healthy 50% margin there. And in fact, in Tokyo, where demand is ridiculously high, retailers are charging for well over the RRP for the console.
Movies: the Lord of the Rings trilogy were the must-see movie three years in a row. Did cinemas suddenly decide to halve the price of entry to see the movies? Of course not.
Music: iPods....everyone wants one. Are they being given away at half price? Ahem...no.
So why is it booksellers are shooting themselves in the foot? Well...the loss leader theory is usually trotted out in answer. Which goes along the lines of...Joe Punter comes in to buy his Harry Potter book, and whilst he's there making his purchase, he's supposed to be seduced by all the other books lying on those central tables around him and spend loads of luverly dosh on a stack of novels he wouldn't otherwise have considered buying.
Hmmmm. Not sure that's actually happening.
Joe Punter isn't doing that. Joe Punter has come in specifically to get his fix of Potter, will grab it, pay for it and bolt back home to read it. In actual fact, he's not even likely to put a single solitary foot inside a book store to buy it anyway - preferring instead to grab it whilst shopping with mum at Tescos. Or he'll just order it online from Amazon.
So surely, the smart thing for a bricks-n-mortar bookseller to do, is to stock a few copies of the latest Potter, (after all, you can't not). Stock say...a dozen hardcover versions, sell them at the RRP and simply accept you aren't going to shift hundreds. Which is fine...let someone else lose money on two hundred units of product sold below cost, and have a little snigger at their expense...suckers. See, I'm really not convinced by the loss leader argument that booksellers are putting forward. I've got a deep suspicion that your average Potter fan is not that much of a book worm. Nor for that matter is your average Dan Brown fan. I suspect they're the one-book-a-year-beside-the-pool type of customer.
Now...why the hell is this trade bothering to chase people like that? Does one book a year from each member of this category of customer really amount to that much money in the coffers? Especially, I might add, when they're getting the book virtually given to them?
*sigh*
Alex lives a nomadic existence with his wife Frances, and son Jacob. For now they're living in Norwich, UK. He spent the first ten years out of college in the music business chasing record deals and the next 12 years in the computer games business as a graphic artist and eventually a games designer.
His debut novel A THOUSAND SUNS is an ITW nominee for Best Debut, and his second book LAST LIGHT is due out in July in hardback.
www.alexscarrow.blogspot.com
www.scarrow.co.uk
