Interviews with industry executives about how they handle challenges in fulfillment and returns.

By Sharon R. Cole

What challenges do you encounter in fulfillment?
Kain: One … is deciding when to stop sending books to bookstores when we have a new edition coming out. We want to time it just right so the stores run out of our older edition before receiving our new ones.

What best practices help you overcome those challenges?
Kain: … We stop shipping older-version books about four months before the release of our new editions, but we still have four months’ worth of books in our online account. If we do it right, the bookstores will run out of the old edition about two months before our new release. Our goal is to limit as many overstock returns as possible.