‘The Beginning of the Snowball’: Supply Chain Snarls Reaches Publishing


These labor and transportation issues still apply when publishers print books in the United States, but they also face other complications. After years of closing and closing printing houses, the domestic demand for printing books now exceeds the current capacity. Remaining plants sometimes do not have enough people to run them, so much-needed machinery can sit idle.

All these problems complement each other. “Trucks are more expensive, containers are more expensive, labor is more expensive,” said Jon Yaged, head of Macmillan’s US trade books division. “And all the extra touches. You used to place a purchase order and the order would arrive only two weeks later. Now, 10 taps and 15 emails. Much more work. ”

This confusion led to a series of publication date changes, delaying a book sometimes by weeks, sometimes by months, completely missing the holiday shopping season. Parag Khanna’s movie “Move” was previously scheduled to be released on Tuesday, but now it will be out next week. Princeton University Press pushed Mark Atwood Lawrence’s book “The End of Ambition” from October to November. “Smahtguy,” a comic about former Representative Barney Frank, has been delayed from fall to spring by Metropolitan Books, a Macmillan imprint. Publishers see such changes as a last resort because a date change can result in cancellations of events or news coverage, cancellation of retail promotions and fewer orders. Publishers prioritized schedules for upcoming books they hoped to be bestsellers.

There isn’t much anyone in the book business can do to fix this. Retailers, authors and distributors are asking readers and customers to shop or order early. Publishers plan ahead and sometimes even ship books on planes. One publisher said it currently costs about 35 to 50 cents per book to ship over water and $5 to 8 by air. No one knows when things will return to normal, but it won’t be long after this holiday season.

Perhaps the biggest issue going into the holidays will be the reprints required when a book’s initial order runs low and needs replenishment. Normally, this kind of order takes about three weeks. Now, it may take three months.

This is where “All the Troubles of Today” got into trouble. The book, about an American woman who led the German resistance against the Nazis, did not run out everywhere, but it took weeks for new stock to enter warehouses, then additional time to reach retailers. (According to Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s director of books, Barnes & Noble, along with many independent stores, had copies all along—the nonfiction buyer loved the book, so the chain ordered so many.) He bought more on Amazon. . over seven weeks to get copies back in stock.

Indeed, one factor compounding these issues is good news for the industry: Demand for print books is strong. According to the American Publishers Association, publishers’ commercial book revenue, which includes most fiction, non-fiction, and general interest books, increased nearly 10 percent last year compared to 2019 and increased 17 percent in the first six months of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020. compared.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *