While the fate of one of the country's largest wholesalers, Advanced Marketing Services, continues to play out in bankruptcy court in Delaware, its smaller regional wholesaling competitors are finding ways to negotiate a bookselling landscape where flat continues to be the new up. Despite a Christmas season that, according to Mike Raymond of the distributors in South Bend, Ind., "did not meet expectations," many wholesalers are investing in technology and inventory to keep up with industry change.
Bookazine continues its drive to become the nation's third national wholesaler, joining giants Ingram and Baker & Taylor, said Richard Kallman, Bookazine executive v-p in charge of sales and marketing and strategic planning. "In all honesty, if an account wants three choices, there's nobody left." In 2007, Bookazine, based in Bayonne, N.J., expects to grow its business well beyond its Mid-Atlantic home and into the South and the Great Lakes regions. In addition, it is adding between 10,000 and 15,000 titles to its inventory base.
Like other general wholesalers, Bookazine's two strongest areas are pop culture and children's. Business with some of the largest children's publishers jumped as much as 90% over 2005, noted Kathleen Willoughby, v-p, marketing and online development. To follow up on this success, Bookazine is hosting a bookseller event at its warehouse at the end of March. Children's book buyer Heather Doss will present her picks for the coming season, and a number of children's authors will be on hand. To promote its pop culture list, Bookazine has just produced its second Popazine annual catalogue, to be distributed at the New York Comic-Con later this month and at the San Diego Comic-Con.
At Partners, "we're holding our own," said Sam Spiegel of Partners/East in Holt, Mich. Both Partners/East and sister company Partners/West in Renton, Wash., run by Vicky Eaves, are moving forward with a major overhaul of their partnersbook.com and partners-west.com Web sites, which will go live at the end of this month. For the first time, booksellers will be able to order online directly, without going through PubEasy.com.
Like Bookazine, Partners is seeking opportunities beyond its geographic boundaries, like participating in VOR (Vendor of Record) programs for chain retailers throughout the country. "There's not the population density in the Great Lakes to sustain a business," said Spiegel. "One of the things we'd like to do when we get our Web site going is to extend our range. We can reach New York in two days."
Partners supplements its bookstore business with library sales. Partners/ West, in particular, has benefited from a front-of-library paperback program that many institutions have added. Participating libraries order between 200 and 300 mass market and trade paperback fiction and popular nonfiction titles every month. Partners is also selling to state parks and garden centers. "It's not going to pay the bills," said Eaves, "but it's a nice niche area." It also enables the wholesaler to offer micro presses a way into the gift market. Currently Partners has 1,200 consignment publishers at each of its two warehouses.
"Our title base is growing every day," said BookStream president and CEO Jack Herr. The Poughkeepsie, N.Y.—based wholesaler—which shipped its first book exactly one year ago and offers booksellers a flat 42% discount and free freight—was one of the few to report "a great Christmas." Through strategic buying, he said, BookStream was able to achieve a solid fill rate despite a narrower title base than most of its competitors. "We're committed to and very focused on the bookselling community within our reach, which is the Mid-Atlantic and North," said Herr, who plans to roll out a partnership with PubEasy in the next few weeks.
Koen-Levy Book Wholesalers in Moorestown, N.J., which marked its first anniversary last November, is concentrating on regaining the niche Koen Books occupied before that company filed for bankruptcy. "We're never going to compete one-on-one with Ingram or Baker & Taylor on titles or size," said senior sales and marketing manager Jim Di Miero. "We have to have the fill where bookstores are confident in putting us number one in the cascade at least twice a week, and where books are well packed and come clean and next-day delivery." Last fall Koen-Levy hired its former Random House rep, Don Brock, to sell in New England; Bob Koen and Di Miero cover the Mid-Atlantic and "near South." Brock's job, said Di Miero, is to reopen former Koen accounts and to seek out nonbook businesses. At the same time, Koen-Levy is still trying to woo back some publishers, including Diamond.
"We're just a little bitty wholesaler," said Susan Bhat, general manager of Books West in Boulder, Colo. The company is dealing with the problems of larger wholesalers adding more regional titles, while booksellers look to cut back on the number of vendors they use. To compete, Books West continues to upgrade its electronic ordering capability, despite the expense, and looks to reduce overhead in other ways. "Over the years, we've worked to be lean but not too skinny," said Bhat, who acknowledges that the company has cut some staff. Later this month, Books West will relocate to a less expensive facility in Denver.
