Cover Story : Rethinking a World With No Returns
Is the key eliminating returns entirely … or more efficient management?
August 2010 By Jim SturdivantReturns remain a problem for the book Publishing industry, although changes to the book-selling landscape brought about by Internet retail, e-books and new distribution models seem destined to make the issue loom less large than it did when mega-bookstores ruled the retail roost.
New options for alleviating the returns burden have proven much easier than attempting to alter the old system. Former HarperStudio President Bob Miller (now at Workman Publishing) recently told an audience at the BookNet Canada Technology Forum that, although the now-shuttered Harper Collins imprint was able to work out deals with a number of book-sellers, many top accounts simply were not willing to accept the inventory risk involved in HarperStudio's offer: discounts on titles in exchange for a no-returns agreement.
"We spent a lot of time trying to come up with terms that were attractive and get accounts on board, and we did get a lot of major accounts on board … [but] by the end of the two years, it became a reason not to buy speculative material," Miller said. "It was too often used as a reason not to take a position, and ultimately, we let go of the nonreturnable approach just in the interest of distributing books we believed in as publishers."
Ultimately, HarperStudio's desire to innovate in distribution ran up against the desire to aggressively court and develop unproven talent—and the latter won. The lesson here might be that, while everyone would like to see returns go away, the gains from changing the system often do not trump the risks involved or the greater benefits seen from prioritizing innovation in other areas.
While Harper Collins has, for now, abandoned its no-returns experiment ("… it was a very complicated program to establish, and we learned a lot," comments company spokesperson Eric Crum), other publishers continue to tinker with various no- or limited-return arrangements.
No Risk, No Returns
"I do think that the tolerance for returns in the book business favors small presses such as mine, at least those who do want to maximize trade sales," says Steve Carlson, publisher, Upper Access Inc. "We don't have big, blockbuster titles. … Therefore, our new titles are never a sure bet for a book-seller. A bookstore buyer is a lot more likely to take a chance on one of my titles if he or she knows that unsold copies can be returned."
While e-books may solve the returns problem for publishers when direct selling is not involved, they do not represent the end of returns as a factor for the industry. Customers who return e-book purchases do so for a variety of reasons, according to Angela James, executive editor at Carina Press, the digital-only division of Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
While some of these reasons are different from those driving traditional book returns, most will be familiar to book retailers.
“The … reasons people want to return a digital book are much the same as [the reasons] they would want to return a print book,” James says. “They didn’t enjoy the book and didn’t feel it was worth the money they paid, they already own a copy of the book, the formatting of the book made it unreadable. I would compare this [last] one to print in that print books get returned because the binding/glue is bad, pages are missing or pages are upside down.
”Additionally, customers will buy the wrong format or find the digital rights management (DRM) on what they’ve purchased is not compatible with their device, rendering an e-book unreadable or a file inaccessible, a problem James says happens most often with Adobe Digital. Consumers, she adds, care less about file standardization (such as EPUB) than they do about the effects of non-standard formats and DRM.
The issue of DRM and returns flared up about a year ago with reports that Amazon was locking people out of their Kindle accounts if they returned too many books. Kindle’s stated policy gives customers one week from the date of purchase to return Kindle content, at which point the content is removed from users’ libraries.
One major, new returns factor involving e-books is the unintended purchase. “[The customer] didn’t realize they were completing the order, didn’t realize they were purchasing the book and they didn’t really want to buy it,” James explains. The problem is as much an online versus brick-and-mortar issue as it is a digital versus print one. “Accidental purchases don’t often take place in brick-and-mortar stores with print,” she notes, “but I suppose they might with online print purchases.”
As with print books, there is the chance that people will read a book and then return it, and the question of what time limits to set for e-returns is still a fluid one. Some e-tailers place no time limit on returns; some (such as Amazon) allow returns within a few days, while others do not allow returns at all.
Perhaps the most important difference between print and digital is the ability of unscrupulous customers to return a book while keeping a copy on their hard drive. “That’s what makes it a different issue than print returns,” James points out.
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
|
All About Email Creative
Who's Charging What!
