Dear Booksellers,

For the past two weeks, ABA COO Joy and I, along with ABA Board President Jamie Fiocco (Flyleaf Books) and ABA Board Vice President Brad Graham (Politics & Prose), have been conducting ABA’s annual individual check-in meetings with publishers and Ingram. Needless to say, these meetings were not business as usual this year.

Continuing my report from Friday on these publisher meetings, here are a few things of note:

Publishers, like bookstores, are in many ways focused on the crisis at hand and are not looking too far into the future. For this reason, it’s critical that bookstores communicate with their credit reps and sales reps. The information you are sharing is shaping how publishers respond to this crisis for bookstores! Updating your store status continues to be critical as recent media stories lead publishers to believe that everyone is opening up again and returning to normal operating status. (Please note that ABA’s store status information is public.)

(This is also a good time to remind everyone that, although it never feels like it, technically you are all competitors. As such, it’s illegal for groups of booksellers collectively to request terms from publishers. You can make requests of publishers on your own, and you can share requests with ABA; we, in turn, can consider what all of the members are asking for and share best practices and recommendations with publishers that will strengthen the industry.)

Publishers are having their own experiences right now and they’re not necessarily privy to what bookstores are experiencing. In our meetings, we shared with publishers what was often new information for many of them: the significant increase in your cost of goods if your orders are being fulfilled online by Ingram; your increased expenses related to COVID-19 (shipping supplies, delivery charges, cleaning supplies, etc.); the problems and insufficiencies of PPP funds; the fact that 75 percent of PPP funds have to be used for payroll if they’re to be forgivable loans (at least one publisher assumed that stores could use that money to pay invoices); staff safety concerns; and the fact that a state reopening doesn’t necessarily mean a store will or can open.

We conveyed to the publishers that we believe that, even with publisher support, bookstores won’t be back on solid ground until Christmas 2021. (Our timeline takes into account the potential resurgence of the virus; changes in consumer behavior due to anxiety about the virus or the potential of a resurgence; a holiday season potentially impacted by social distancing, supply chain issues, a regular flu season that could cause potential panic, a likely recession, and unemployment; Amazon’s return to book sales [not bookselling, just saying]; bills that have been kicked down the road coming due; and bookstores digging out of the debt that has accrued during the months they were closed.) We explained that without publisher support, some bookstores are in danger of closing permanently.

We expressed that ABA’s goal right now is to help start the flow of money and books again, and in the right directions, and that the best actions publishers can take to help your stores and help you sell more of their books are: long-term amortization on invoices due prior to June 30; extended dating on new invoices; additional discount on new orders; and help with returns (extra points to help cover shipping, call tags, returns in place, and markdowns in place were all discussed, noting the significant challenges of that last one). Publishers will make individual decisions regarding their trade terms based on the unique factors of their businesses. But we believe these overall recommendations for relief benefit booksellers, publishers, authors, and readers. 

Macmillan is stepping up to help in many of these ways! The recovery plan in support of independent bookstores that they are announcing this week includes many of the best practices we believe will help the indies, including long-term amortization of outstanding balances as of June 1, 2020, extended dating on orders placed through the end of the year, and additional discount on new orders. Macmillan distribution publishers are participating as well: Bloomsbury, College Board, Guinness World Records (2020 and 2021 editions), Kingfisher, Macmillan Collector’s Library, Media Lab, Page Street, Papercutz, Seven Seas, Sounds True, and Wattpad. 

In our meeting with them Macmillan was committed, engaged, and interested in planning for the future. We are grateful for Macmillan’s long-term thinking for the industry during this crisis and for their ongoing support of the indies. We hope you'll join us in thanking them.

We still hope that there will be more announcements to follow as publishers realize that supporting the indies right now is critical to their own businesses’ success. In the meantime, it’s important for bookstores to remember that some publishers, for various reasons, are still supporting stores but on a case-by-case basis rather than announcing a community plan. It’s critical that you communicate with your sales and credit reps to ask what they’re offering and to share with them what you need.

ABA is here for all of you. Please reach out if there is anything ABA can help with. This is all just another reminder that we are an incredibly creative, resilient, supportive industry. We’ll get through this, together.

Best,
Allison