Two Words: The Blog of the Center for the Art of Translation


Used-Book Sales Are On the Rise and It's Amazon's Fault

Posted on August 10, 2010 by

Publishers Weekly is reporting that sales of used books have been rising for almost a decade. And once again, it's all Amazon's fault:

During the past decade, they grew so rapidly that by April 2002 the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers attacked Amazon for placing new books at risk. "If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon's customers, this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers," they wrote in an open letter to Jeff Bezos.

I'm beginning to develop a theory that since Amazon handles so many parts of the publishing and booksale businesses, they're constantly in the headlines for evildoing because they get hammered by so many different interest groups. I don't think this is totally fair.

Publishers Weekly also reports that Amazon is not the only actor here:

In the intervening years, not just Amazon but brick-and-mortar bookstores that rely on sales through Amazon, eBay, and Alibris to bolster walk-in traffic, have benefited from the growth of used books. "We do more business online, make more money, than in the store," says Dan Moore, co-owner of 27-year-old McIntyre and Moore Booksellers, a used-book store with a scholarly bent in Cambridge, Mass.

And there's also Alibris and Half Price Books (which I love), both major forces in the secondhand book trade.

And then there are indies, which more and more are embracing used books as a way to supplement their business:

But it's not just big resellers that are benefiting from customers trying to stretch their dollars. Earlier this summer, Left Bank Books in St. Louis rearranged its flagship store in the Central West End to devote more space to used. "With the current economic climate," says manager Anna Rimel, "we noticed our used books were high on the list of what we are selling and decided to expand." Left Bank now devotes most of its downstairs to used, although it continues to shelve new and used gender studies titles together upstairs.

It's an interesting article, well worth reading in full. I happen to love buying used books, not really for the deals so much as because the used-book stores in my area tend to have much better fiction selections than the new book stores. And you also get the pleasure of the occasional dedication or newspaper clipping inserted in the book, as well as the sensation of knowing that your book has maybe been read and cherished by someone before you.



How to Triple Your Profits

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Scott Esposito

The Independent has an interesting article about what translation-phenom Stieg Larsson has done for the once-tiny UK publisher Quercus:

Fast forward to the present day and Smith's nerves have been calmed by news that the phenomenal success of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has helped his independent publishing house, which has since moved to its own rather-more-opulent offices on Bloomsbury Square, has recorded a huge jump in profits. Revenues at Quercus almost trebled to £15m in the first six months of 2010 from a year earlier and the company's share price jumped from 12p to 74.5p.

At the article details, the benefits go beyond nicer offices and higher share prices:

"Before Larsson, we were constantly having to prove ourselves. As a new start-up we weren't high up agents' lists and had to work really hard to convince authors to sign. It was difficult," Mr Smith says. "Everyone dreams of signing the next blockbuster, the next Harry Potter – and we did. I've had colleagues who have been waiting 25 years for such a hit."

The article also has some information on how Quercus managed to land the book and make it a huge success. Part of that was recruiting "Christopher MacLehose, who had a reputation as a master at finding foreign fiction by writers such as Henning Mankell and Haruki Murakami and turning them into English language hits." But the publisher still had to overcome Larsson's "funny name":

The publisher failed to get the books into prominent positions in the shops, and some refused to stock it. One prominent retailer, who Mr Smith declined to name, said its customers "don't like authors with funny names".

Given the range of names out there, "Stieg Larsson" does not strike me as all that dramatic . . .




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