Lou, Lou, skip to my...uh-oh.: seanan

Lou, Lou, skip to my...uh-oh.

Up until recently, I was unaware that sometimes the reason I can't find certain books in certain stores is because those stores have just sort of decided not to carry them. This process is called 'skipping.' Books can be skipped because the store doesn't have room on the shelf for another new author, because their historical-romances-with-sharks section just isn't that big, because your last book didn't perform well enough, or because they don't like your cover. (I suspect this last is unlikely, but I'm not a book-buyer, so who knows?)

Now, this practice is absolutely not always malicious or cruel or even ill-intended. The economy is hitting everyone pretty hard right now. My favorite independant bookstores are being forced to make some very tough choices, and most of us -- myself sadly included -- will probably reply to 'we don't have that' with 'I'll just go elsewhere for this one,' rather than waiting for the special order.* So either they buy one of absolutely everything to avoid 'skipping,' or they only buy what they know is going to sell, and maybe lose a few sales as people don't go there for the other books. Bit by bit, the lack of disposable income nudges the bookstores towards whatever is currently 'mainstream.' No malice. Just money.

(*I did this just last week, when Other Change of Hobbit didn't have the new Kelley Armstrong. In my defense, I really needed the book to read during my flight to Ohio. That's still money that they didn't get from me, and would have had they either had the book in-stock, or had I been willing to wait.)

There's a fascinating post on being skipped and what it means here, which is really what got me thinking about the topic. I mean, no one wants to be skipped. The idea of being skipped has given me something entirely shiny and new to worry about, along with 'will my cover be awesome?,' 'will my reviews be good?,' and 'will the zombies come before my book comes out?' Now we have 'oh dear stars, will my book be skipped?'

The answer is, at the end of things, no, yes, and maybe. Will every store stock my book? Nope. Will most stores stock my book? Everything going well, yes. Will some stores order my book after the initial sales figures start coming back? Almost certainly.

There are some additional issues to be considered, and it's important to remember that threats of boycott and such have a nasty tendency to result in stores getting sour grapes and saying 'well, fine, I just won't stock any giant shark books at all, then,' which does no one any good.

It's a big topic. It has a lot of factors. It's a little daunting. But we shall be okay! Because our strength is as the strength of ten, and also, we have cookies.

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seanan_mcguire

October 31 2008, 01:40:53 UTC 8 years ago

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All very true. At the same time, when the money isn't there, the money isn't there, and if you sell the Koontz not at all, the Armstrong sells eight copies, and the Scalzi sells eight copies but takes six times as long to do it, you may well wind up buying the Armstrong first, reducing your order for the Scalzi, and letting the Koontz go hang.

Bah upon this economy. Bah upon it twice.

msagara

October 31 2008, 01:50:26 UTC 8 years ago

Yes, it's tricky. Whichever title, you want to order no more than you'll sell in a month; if you're hit with unexpected success, you reorder asap. So it's the numbers that have moved previously that in theory guide the numbers that you order up front with frontlist. Which means, yes, first novels with no track record are entrail-reading.

I think the big-box stores have (obviously) a different cutoff point than the independents. But honestly, if an independent has regulars who consistently buy -any- given author, they would pick that author's books up; they drop an author in an independent when there's been no movement. They might only buy backlist quantities, rather than frontlist quantities, but you'd stock them. If you as a bookstore shopper were always buying the Armstrong from the same independent -- let's go back to that example -- I don't actually understand why it was dropped entirely. In this case, they would not be saving money by ordering none of it; they don't have to order a specific minimum of that title in order to stock it.

November 6 2008, 15:50:33 UTC 8 years ago

Oh, absolutely. And in this case, the Armstrong is actually sort of a red herring: it's not that they skipped it, it's that their shipment was delayed and I really, really needed something to read on the plane.

The big-boxes definitely have different cutoffs. They also have a lot more 'global' influence on an author's overall sales. It's disturbing.

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