Our friends at Aurora were badly bitten by returns lately (according to Deb Aoki). I want to mention that Yaoi Press gets similarly stung on a regular basis.
Returns are a racket in the publishing business. A few companies will return books just to get a credit on a bill with the distributor. They reorder the same books they're returning, often at the same time they return them. This isn't a wash, because publishers like Yaoi Press and Aurora get charged a fee for every US return.
There was also an instance where a book wholesaler went bankrupt and had their inventory purchased by another wholesaler for $.25/pound. The purchaser returned all those books because if you buy something for $.13 (two soft covers = 1 pound) and can 'return' it for the wholesale price that's easy money. Never mind that they were prohibited from returning books that they did not buy directly from the distributor. How could the distributor prove that these books were bought from the defunct wholesaler and weren't old books they'd bought in the past and just magically decided to return enmasse at that time?
I mentioned at Twitter that due to the cycle of returns Yaoi Press rarely sees payment from our distributor except with a new title is first released. Most weeks we have a negative balance with our distributor that carries over week after week. After a new title is released we get one large payment a month and a half later. This is usually sufficient to pay the printing/shipping bill for the book that was released. For all our other bills we rely on sales from everythingyaoi.com, conventions, and a few other things like Netcomics. This is how we stay alive. Publishing is a tough business.
You can help Aurora by contacting Elisa Tung at e-tung9(at)aurora-publishing.com to purchase their titles direct from them. Books published prior to January 2009 are $4 a book and anything more recent than that for $8.
2 comments:
6% charge and then reorder the same book? on top of 60% discount?
now I really wonder why borders have such problems. Here goes another part of the industry that needs some serious revisions.
with comic shops being nicer towards woman, I think with a push they could have a nice combat. plus, I dont think manga will need to be as expensive as it is since the larger discount and returns fee isnt accounted for.
Thanks for the details on the publishing issues that you and Aurora face, since very few understand the vagaries of manga publishing.
I went ahead and covered this on my newsfeed at AnimeNews.biz, so hopefully more attention can be brought to these issues.
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