Skip Amazon and buy direct
According to reporting in Publishers Weekly, Amazon is reducing its holiday season orders from publishers in order to “deal with congestion issues at its warehouses.”
For small, independent and university press publishers, this is a big deal. If your press’s book isn’t available on Amazon, for many buyers, it isn’t available at all. One independent publisher whose Amazon order was 75% lower as compared to last year told Publishers Weekly that they were facing a “nightmare scenario.”
On Twitter, Anne Trubek, founder of the Midwest’s own Belt Publishing, reported that for the percentage of books sold through a distributor, the proportion coming through Amazon has dropped from 70% to 20%.
For small publishers with tight margins, Amazon’s decision to throttle back on the available supply can be an existential threat. Fortunately, there’s something we can do: Buy directly from the publisher.
Trubek illuminates how important this can be in the same tweet by noting that while only 25% of Belt Publishing’s books are sold direct to the customer, 40% of their revenue comes from that 25% of sales.
Buying direct has an outsized impact on these publishers, and during the holiday season, when a significant proportion of annual sales are realized, direct buying is even more important.
Yes, it is less convenient than Amazon, with its one-click ordering, but poring through the offerings on a small or university press publisher’s website is enjoyable in and of itself, as you may be introduced to books you previously didn’t know existed. Often, these publishers have special holiday codes, which sometimes more than offset whatever discount or free shipping Amazon supplies.
Looking for a gift for the teacher in your life? Go to Teacher’s College Press and pick out a title that fits. The churchgoer may be delightfully surprised by a choice from Plough Publishing House’s catalog.
Want to read critically acclaimed and award-winning literary fiction, poetry and nonfiction that’s off the beaten path? Go direct to Minnesota’s Coffee House Press.
If you check out publisher websites, you’ll see opportunities for bundles and other gifts, like Belt’s “starter” box, which includes a T-shirt, sticker and two books — “How to Speak Midwestern” by Edward McClelland and “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia” by Elizabeth
Catte, an attempt to move beyond the narrow picture in J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.”
University of Chicago Press has books that would appeal to every possible reader.
Dorothy (a publishing project) is offering every book they’ve ever published (including works by Marguerite Duras, Nell Zink and Renee Gladman) for $200. How awesome would it be to tell the reader in your life that you’ve acquired the entire catalog of a publisher, just for them?
It has taken me days to write this column, because each stop at a different publisher drops me down a rabbit hole of amazing choices. I cannot come close to listing all the publishers I’ve had a chance to explore.
I know people who get a visceral charge from seeing that Amazon box on their doorstep, but it’ll be even more fun to send others (or even yourself ) a less familiar package that has them wondering what could possibly be inside.
If you buy direct from small and university press publishers, you give a gift that helps ensure we will have a steady supply of more great books for future holidays.
Here’s a bit of a book recommending trick that I rely on sometimes: If I notice a book that’s quite newly released, I take this as evidence that the reader is a specific fan of that writer (Ann Patchett in this case) and then try to think of a writer who offers similar pleasures, but is also just different enough to not be too much of a repeat of a recent experience. I’m going with
by Alan Hollinghurst.
Ellmann deWitt
Fante by Nicholson Baker by Peter Heller by Patrick
Dexter is clearly not afraid of anything as a reader. I’m recommending a novel that stretches what we’re willing to believe in some wonderful ways:
Aimee Bender. by Lucy
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
by John by
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read to books@chicagotribune.com.