The Book People - how come so cheap?

[Pennies]

DH came back from work yesterday with the complete set of Beatrix Potter on CD, a book with al the Little Miss stories in it and a large Winnie the pooh box set which he got from one of the people selling books round offices from The Book People.

The whole lot cost him about £40 when the RRP on them totalled about £200.

Am I being stupid, but how do they well them at such discounts?

roisin - how do you know all this then - do you work for them?

glad everyone else thinks they're fab - I was wondering if I was missing something and was being totally conned!

Yes, it's interesting to know how these things work. Then you can appear intelligent and knowledgeable in RL if someone asks

Very interested in that what's effectively being cleared out is the "research & development" type cost in the original publication.

I am now wondering whether I approve, oh dear! - as I guess a Book People habit isn't going to foster non-mass-market new writing. I wonder what there is out there for that? I know theatres are forever doing New Writers searches & spotlights, but what about children's writing? Or is the market just too saturated (or simply just different) for that?

I have done some editing for a small publisher, but pre-kids I used to work for Oxford University Press.

I actually worked in music publishing, which is different in many ways, but had contact with other departments within OUP too. In music publishing the fixed costs (everything prior to printing but not including royalties) were a much higher percentage, because compared to book publishing our printruns were usually tiny. But the principles are the same.

I definitely think it is a good thing Bink. It makes quality literature more accessible to lower income families, especially through schemes like School Link.

For the Roisin Household, I think we probably spend more £££ on books than we would without the existence of the Book People.

We probably spend a similar amount (= large % of our disposable income ) at each of:

1. Small independent bookshop - that I feel guilty I don't support more, because they are fab, but expensive
2. Highstreet bookshops
3. Amazon
4. Red House/The Book People

When the boys were younger we bought mostly from The Book People, but that's not the case anymore.

I currently have ten books in my basket with Amazon, and only one is currently available from Red House/The Book People.

The bit that Bink quotes is not, indeed, the whole story.

Publishers do deals with Ted Smart of the Book People, which include massive discounts. This filters down as great slices taken off the author's royalties. You can interpret this two ways. Either the author is only getting 50p on a book where he should be getting £1, or he is getting 50p per book on a stack of copies which would otherwise be remaindered.

When you buy a book anywhere at less than full price, you are buying into a system that deprives authors of royalties. But I don't blame people for doing it, as some books, especially hardbacks, do seem over-priced.

CDs are a similar problem - I've bought many "bargain bucket" ones in my time and felt a twinge of guilt - but at least musicians have the chance to play live and promote their work that way. For writers, the books are their main source of income. Any live stuff they may do from time to time is only promotional and they do not, by and large, get paid for it.

I do feel guilty buying chart paperbacks from Tescos at £3.73.

But I wouldn't buy them at £6.99 I would just wait and borrow them from the library or buy from charity shops.

So is the author better off in my case?

Don't, in general, feel bad for buying books cheaply from supermarkets. A writer who is doing well enough to get a supermarket deal will have done OK out of it - more so than from a conventional bookshop.

What you should have a pang about is patronising those remainder shops like The Works, because the author gets absolutely zilch on sales from those. Second-hand is better - at least someone has already bought it and given the author his cut.

People often don't realise that, when you write a book, even once it has been accepted for publication it is an uphill struggle to get it into the bookshops. About 200K books are published in the UK each year and only 130K or so end up on bookshop shelves. The largest bookshop in the country, W'stones at Bluewater, only has room for 200K books in total. So to get it on supermarket shelves is nothing short of a miracle.

Fair point re. cost to author Unquiet Dad, but for things like Beatrix Potter & Winnie the Pooh and other BIG titles isn't most of the money now made from non book merchandise? I doubt I'd buy lesser known authors via Book People (tho I'd never say never }

UQD - what are standard royalty terms these days? Do you get a % of the wholesale cost? Or a % of what the book eventually sells for?

i.e. does discounting actually affect the author's royalty?

Larger businesses can clearly demand higher discounts from the publishers in the first place, which directly affects authors' royalties, and indirectly affects the prices they can sell them on for.

Thanks UD.

I'd like to know, too, about market practice in authors' contracts: can you, as an author, protect your royalty by, eg, stopping your publisher doing royalty-squeezing deals on your books?

(I am thinking about the sort of books you find in those little independent bookshops, which I love too & do use quite a lot, but don't find w/ Book People, though you'd think they'd be ideal fodder: such as Marcia Williams's books. What's stopping Book People carrying them, do you think?)

Interestingly Bink I got some Marcia Williams books from one of those clubs that bring books to the workplace. I don't know which one it was though!

Sometimes very new, but popular and well-reviewed titles, are not widely carried by mainstream highstreet stores - especially from smaller publishers. I remember, for example, struggling to get hold of a copy of Grk in Waterstones or WHS. I have always assumed this is based on an inability to agree to the cripping terms large enterprises demand; which some smaller publishers just cannot afford.

But then Amazon carries just about everything, and I cannot imagine they are very generous with their terms?

roisin/Bink - I am not that great with contractual stuff, actually, and luckily I have a very good agent who takes care of all that. She does her best to get me the best deal on each contract - negotiates them all individually and doesn't use "boilerplates". She is merciless about striking out clauses which disadvantage her authors. Publishers do try it on!

One big point of dispute is that publishers increasingly try to get agents/authors to accept the royalty rate (7-8% on paperback, 10% on hardback) to be worked out on the net receipts rather than on the standard sale price. Obviously this is terrible for authors as, if the book's discounted, they get less. A decent agent will argue for such a clause to be removed.