Just last month it seemed as if Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol could be the biggest loss leader of the season. That's before the latest round of what Carla Cohen, co-owner of Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., dubs “the Battle of the Giants,” a pre-holiday grab for consumer dollars. While most independents discount, at least a little bit—loyalty programs, staff picks and/or New York Times bestsellers—to show that they are trying to meet their customers half way, some have begun to feel the need to tweak existing programs and add new ones.
“We've always taken the position that there's no way we can compete, but we'll sweeten it for you so you don't think you're a chump,” said Cohen. Hardcovers continue to sell briskly at Politics and Prose, which does the same dollar business in hardcovers as paperbacks. Still, this fall the store experimented with discounts for pre-pub orders on books sure to hit the bestsellers list: True Compass, The Lost Symbol and Wolf Hall. And Cohen is adding an extra sale day for members this year.
For Lost Symbol, R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., took the unusual step of offering an employee discount of 30% on pre-pub sales. In an e-mail blast, owner Roxanne Coady conceded: “You might have scoped out our competition, and you'll quickly see that there are some pretty big discounts on the book, which presents an awkward problem for us both. We're as frustrated as you are torn—you want to save some cash but also want to keep your dollars in Madison, and we want to sell you the book!” As she sees it, what her store provides is value. “You might get 30%, 40% or 50% off [elsewhere],” she said, “but we're here to tell you if you should have bought it.”
Both Neal Sofman, former head of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, now general manager of BookShop West Port in San Francisco, and former Harry W. Schwartz buyer Daniel Goldin, proprietor of Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, Wis., are keenly aware of what happens when stores offer too much discount. They go under. Even so, said Sofman, who typically discounts 15 to 20 hardcovers and paperbacks at any one time, “you need to give customers a price break, too.”
One of several booksellers considering buying the top 10 discounted titles from online retailers instead of publishers, Goldin offers primary discounts, or “rebates,” on store picks and a $5 coupon for every $100 spent in the store. “We're in a totally different place,” he said, “because people lost their independent bookstore. Schwartz had a lot of discounts floating around, and the numbers didn't work out so well.” He conceded, though, that next year he may have to increase the loyalty coupon and discount other items.
Many independents holding author events with Barbara Kingsolver for Lacuna are sticking with the list price even though her forthcoming novel is heavily discounted at Wal-Mart. “I know we got Barbara Kingsolver because we bought the books from Harper. Our supportive community understands that if they want to see Barbara Kingsolver, they have to buy the books from us. We honor the relationship with the publisher, just like our customers honor their relationship with us,” said Cindy Dach, general manager of Changing Hands in Tempe, Ariz. She is on track to fill an 800-seat hall by selling 800 books at full price.
Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, N.C., which also tied books to tickets, has already sold 800 copies of the new Kingsolver with no discount, according to general manager Linda Barrett Knopp. Her store's only regular discount is to book club members for the book they are reading that month. “Owner Emoke B'Racz has long believed that we will never survive, let alone thrive if we discount as a general policy,” she said.
Other booksellers like Geoffrey Jennings at Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kans., also feel strongly about not discounting. The store's tagline, “Knowledgeable Advice at a Fair Price,” sums up Jennings's philosophy. Still, he said, “As a relationship organization, you have to do something. You can't say everything is full price and screw you.” Rainy Day discounts New York Times bestselling hardcovers and offers a loyalty program, which Jennings prefers to look at as a “savings” plan.
However, no independent bookseller, even those who want to lessen the pain of full price for loyal customers, can possibly match the prices of those books currently being fought over. Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, is one of the few to face it head on. In his store's most recent e-mail newsletter, he called what the mass merchandisers are doing “almost certainly a violation of antitrust laws.” And, he continued, “we can't afford for the Government to be yet another bystander while soulless billionaire corporations turn the book market place into a bloody cage match in which the concept of a level playing field is so fictional that no publisher would find it credible to publish.”
No matter which side of the discounting issue booksellers come down on, it's clear that this fall's “embarrassment of riches” has turned into an embarrassment of competition. It's too soon to tell whether strategic pricing will help, but as Coady noted, “This is a war for the share of the wallet of a consumer.” It could be one skirmish independents can't afford to lose.
