A new baseball reference book from Barnes & Noble Publishing could revive a moribund market even as it threatens other houses' stake in it.
When the Web first became a force, the standard baseball encyclopedia was largely written off, with several publishers discontinuing their books on the subject. But this year, several new houses, betting that fans want more than what they can get on the Internet, are getting in the game, including a not-entirely-unexpected player in B&N.
St. Martin's Press, the only house to publish such a book every year for the better part of two decades, is about to release its annual updated version, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2004. And in June, baseball author John Thorn, founder of Total Sports, will bring out a new book from Toronto's Sport Media Group, which bought the Total Sports assets after it went bankrupt. And in a curious twist, Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette, who worked on some of the Total Sports books with Thorn, have joined B&N to help the bookseller compile its own edition, a book that B&N has named The Baseball Encyclopedia, the original title used by Macmillan.
It's the newest niche that B&N is entering as a publisher, and it's doing so in ways similar to its other entries: cheaply, aggressively and, inevitably, with the muted resentment of competitors.
Thorn (speaking as an author) said that it's his understanding that B&N has taken substantially fewer copies of his own book, even as he wonders how, at $24.95, B&N's 1,700-page book can have a working P&L. The question, he asked, is: Will it matter? "They have an advantage that publishers don't," he said, "so they're playing kill the competition. It's rather like a baseball franchise. They don't need to make money on operating revenue because it's a long-term game plan."
Bob Markel, a packager who edited the Macmillan book and collaborated on the newest St. Martin's edition, said he hadn't as yet noted a decline in sales for the SMP book at B&N as yet, but said the added competition does have him a little worried. "We're concerned but we continue to talk about how to make the series better."
B&N, which did not return a call seeking comment by press time, is following the same model as it has with its classics and SparkNotes lines: taking books with no advance tag and strong backlist potential and promoting them heavily, in a move that will likely force publishers to reevaluate their own lists.
Wiley, already singed by CliffsNotes, may be deterred from bringing back its own version of the baseball encyclopedia; no one at the house that we contacted could speak to it.
"Everyone thought the Internet would obviate the need for books like this, but they're back," said Markel. Who they'll come from is a question publishing players—and certain bookstore owners—will decide.
