I had a question come into the site last night regarding sales through bookstores, and specifically the issue of making books returnable.

Here was the situation - this author (not yet a BookLocker author) spoke with her local Borders manager about stocking her book when it came out. The manager told her he could put her in contact with the buyer for all the Borders stores, but the books would have to be returnable for Borders to consider stocking them.

I promptly told this woman that if her primary method of marketing this book was through bookstores, she should forget POD publishing. The economics just don’t work out.

It made me take pause and realize that many authors simply don’t understand how the money flows in POD publishing.

Here is how POD publishing works when it comes to bookstore sales. A bookstore collects money from a customer, takes out their percentage, then sends the remainder to the distributor/printer (Ingram in our case). Ingram takes out the printing costs and their piece of the sale, and sends what’s left over to the POD publisher, who then gives the author his or her cut of the sale.

When a bookstore “returns” a book, the money goes back to the bookstore from the distributor/printer - leaving no funds to pay the printing bill. The distributor/printer, in turn, takes the money they just paid out to the bookstore from the POD Publisher.

It is never a good situation when a business owes money. But it’s doubly bad when the business has no idea how much money they are going to owe or when it will come due. (Remember, bookstores can return one book, a hundred books, a thousand books; and at any time). This economic uncertainty is why POD books are, generally, non-returnable.

To mitigate the uncertainty of returns, some POD publishers offer programs whereby an author can pay a deposit, and then list his or her book as returnable. If the bookstores return the book, the cost of the printing comes out of the deposit.

BookLocker does not have such a program, and never will. We just don’t believe in the concept of returns. It is a system unfairly weighted in favor of the bookstores. Just because bookstores don’t understand their markets well enough to predict demand doesn’t mean our business (and our authors) should have to operate at risk - especially for an outlet that generates a very small part of our overall sales.

Most of our sales are direct to the public, or are through online stores like Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. When we do sell to bookstores (and we still do, everyday), it is on a special order basis.

Update: Here are some links to other articles we’ve written on the issue.

Why All Books Should Be Non-Returnable By Angela Hoy

Why All Books Should Be Non-Returnable - Part II By Angela Hoy