ARTS & FARCES internet

I’ve never heard Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, referred to as “the most powerful figure in the book business” anywhere but the New York Times. It happened again yesterday in a pitiful piece by David Kirkpatrick.

In a piece of reporting that’s so terribly bad I barely know where to start, Kirkpatrick allows Riggio to bemoan the idea that publishers might be selling their books to warehouse retailers at a lower price and that publishers have monopolies on their titles. Kirkpatrick quotes Riggio as telling financial analysts in a conference call that Barnes & Noble might take “decisive actions” to persuade its suppliers to be fair to the country’s largest bookstore chain. Sounds like a threat, except Riggio denies it in another interview, saying that he meant that he’d have “conversations” with publishers. Hey, maybe the guy’s finally gotten around to hopping on the Cluetrain. Doubtful, but possible.

Pity poor Riggio. Barnes & Noble generally expects at least a 40% discount with the publisher paying shipping. Of course Kirkpatrick’s article makes no mention of this. Nor does Kirkpatrick bother to mention that booksellers like Barnes & Noble basically sell books on consignment. Books, unlike many other retail goods, are usually fully returnable for full credit. Forever. Including the books with coffee stains, dog-eared pages, and all the rest.

Just to be absolutely clear about this. Riggio and his ilk take zero risk to stock books from publishers. Publishers generally pay the freight and for “extras” like having the book displayed face-up on a table. Riggio and booksellers like him see at least a 40% margin on the books they do sell, and get to send the ones they don’t back at the publishers’ expense. Tell me again how unfair this is, Leonard?

And he wants to have a come to Jesus meeting with the publishers who aren’t treating him fair enough. This from the guy, after all, who once said something like he’d just as soon sell hardware, books didn’t much matter to him.

Kirkpatrick could almost be excused for his shoddy reporting except for this paragraph:

“Retailers of all kinds of goods routinely haggle with suppliers over terms and prices, but the book industry imposes special constraints. Bookstores can seldom substitute one publisher’s book for another’s, nor can publishers sell a different, less expensive edition of a new book to one store and a more expensive version to another, as a toolmaker might do with hammers. ‘Each publisher has, in effect, a monopoly over each title they sell,’ Mr. Riggio told the analysts.”

Riggio is powerful in the publishing industry; there’s no doubt about that. Most publishers can’t afford not to do business with Barnes & Noble. While ARTS & FARCES doesn’t necessarily avoid doing business with Barnes & Noble—we’re sort of like a Caribbean bar; we’ll sell our books to anyone who puts money on the table—but we do so on our terms, not Riggio’s. We sell our books to Barnes & Noble under the same terms we sell books to anyone else: All orders must be prepaid; sales of more than one unit are final and returns are not accepted (individual unit purchases are returnable for 30 days); and the buyer pays shipping.

The chairman of Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest bookstore chain, felt compelled to tell the New York Times that he and his stores “have a right to not put the book in a big stack at the front of the store. I don’t feel we are obliged to promote a book.” Nevermind that publishers pay dearly to have their books put in a big stack at the front of the store. The unanswered question remains: just what are the obligations of booksellers?