Lunch at the Social Kitchen

The CEO of Exclusive Books; Benjamin Trisk, writes a quarterly column for the SA Booksellers Association. His October missive here:

Recently I dined with a South African distributor who, although very good, caused me to wonder what the future is for small distribution businesses in the book industry. I mention this specifically because in the past twelve months or so, we have seen a number of smaller players either go out of business for personal reasons or succumb to the financial pressures associated with inventory investment and the timing consequences that are imposed on cash flows.

Thirty years ago (and more), a strong Rand enabled relatively small businesses to stock books in depth with a comforting thought that sales and payment terms would be sufficient to fund the lists in stock. That is no longer the case. There are a number of structural problems that have imposed themselves on the old model and it seems that distribution, certainly with regard to overseas books, will be located in fewer and fewer hands. This is an inevitable result of the weak rand, growing debtor vigilance on the part of overseas publishers, the concentration of power in big corporate publishing entities and the disappearance of independent book stores. The net result is that, I think, the smaller publishers, coming out of both the U.K. and the U.S.A., will supply on an indent-only basis or, alternatively, will at best use a non-stock holding sales representative to parcel up orders and supply directly out of one of the big U.K. or U.S.A. distribution centres.

If this is the case, and that is the direction in which we are moving, then the result will be an almost certain diminution on the range offered by the South African bookseller. At Exclusive Books, we cannot afford to let that happen. 85% of our sales are accounted for by the long tail that sits outside the top 100 best sellers. So, we need to maintain range at all costs and I think this will mean that the customer will see more and more diversity as we tailor each store’s inventory specifically to the customer base that it serves.

When it comes to South African publishing, I do not see much change. Cash flow is the grease that oils business and local publishers, especially the smaller ones, have a problem. If they want to sell to us, they need a vendor number and they need an ability to get to each store. This is not always possible. Which means, they need to find a distributor or at least an order-taker who can get around to the stores, who can work the market and promote the books. Again, small publishers and small distributors face the problem of a lack of structural capacity.

There was a time, and I was witness to it once, when a publisher would first outline the books he intended to publish and only publish them once the orders warranted a print-run. That is no longer the case. At Exclusive Books, we do our best to promote smaller publishers but in order to do so, the publisher has to be present to promote and present the books. Even then, the publisher has first to commit its scarce resources, capital, to the publishing enterprise. My concern is that we shouldn’t lose books because publishing becomes too expensive for the smaller publisher. Rather Government needs to put funds aside to help publish worthwhile texts. And worthwhile texts are those that the public wants to read.

This was brought to mind forcibly this past week when I was in Frankfurt. A number of smaller South African publishers had stands at the Book Fair. I use the words “stands” loosely. It was a group of tables and chairs with a few books scattered on their respective back walls within a section of a stand that carried the South African flag for nomenclature. A more pathetic display of a country’s literary output I have never seen. It would be far better for whichever Government department financed this exercise, to take those funds and help support smaller publishers financially through a system of grants and low interest loans. The South African presence did nothing to enhance the image of a local industry that is growing, that is vibrant, and is exciting. We really are our own worst enemy.