Poor, poor mainstream publishers.

Reading the website, Passive Voice, about the problems mainstream publishers are having.

It appears that 30 years ago they could pretty much count on selling a couple thousand copies of just about any hardcover they put out there. Between B Daltons,  Waldenbooks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the 12,000 or so independent bookstores, they could count on selling enough to make a small profit on most "mid-list" books.

It helped that they had (pre-internet) readier access to more venues than small publishers, and that most bookstores relied on the bigger publishers. The yearly BOOKS IN PRINT had about 500,000 titles available.

When indie bookstores started dropping like flies, and Daltons and Waldens went the way of the Dodo, and Amazon entered the scene, the publishers started buying each other up to maintain their thresholds.

There are now basically 5 big corporate publishers who between them own almost every publisher you've ever heard of.

There are also now 15 million titles available--not counting innumerable Print-on-Demand books.

But most of their mid-list books started losing money.

So they naturally gravitated toward "best-sellers." If a book doesn't have the potential to become big, they won't publish it. They handed that choice over to agents, basically. (It's more or less impossible to get a Big Five publisher to look at a non-represented manuscript.)

The market started going around these roadblocks, as tends to happen. Smaller publishers rushed into the bridge the void, and other authors just went ahead and published themselves. Admittedly, along with the good, there's plenty of bad.

But the Big Five publishers narrowed their focus just as the markets were expanding. They forced the ebook prices up--and then announced the ebooks sales were dropping. Meanwhile, most indie writers have found a sweet spot price of $2.99 to 5.99, of which the writer can get 70%.

Anyway, this is long lead-in to my point.

The publishers killed the indie bookstores by giving preferential treatment to Barnes & Noble and Borders. Most of the damage was done before Amazon even entered the picture. It wasn't so much that the smaller bookstores couldn't compete but that they weren't really allowed to compete. Exclusives, earlier shipping, greater return privileges, and higher discounts made it impossible for most small bookstores to compete.

Of the four indie bookstore that were here in Bend when Barnes and Noble came to town, none survive. We have had several new bookstores pop up since then that have also failed. Right now we have Roundabout Books, and downtown, Dudleys and Pegasus Books are carrying larger and larger selections of new books.

There are roughly 2500 indie bookstores nowadays. Not enough for mainstream publishers to depend upon. God help the Big Five if Barnes & Noble ever goes belly-up. Small bookstores are making a bit of a comeback, but I doubt they'll ever reach their previous numbers.

Thing is--none of this was necessary. The publishers could have supplied the big chainstores in such a way that they didn't kill the indie bookstores. But they chose the easy path, the short-term path--the greedy path.

After 40 years in business, it's agonizing to watch the game industry currently making the same bad choices. The chainstores are being given "exclusives, earlier shipping, greater return privileges, and higher discounts." (The sports card market killed off the small card shops the same way years ago--and killed their own industry while they were at it.) I think the only reason comics didn't do the same thing is that comics have never been big enough for the chainstores to risk selling them for long.

This won't end well for the board game companies. They'll have a few glory years, which will seem to validate their choice to go to Target and Walmart, and then--without the smaller stores supporting the actual playing of games--their sales will drop to nothing.

Oh, I'm sure that Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride,  Carcassone and a few others will join the iconic ranks of Monopoly and Risk--but woe to any mid-list or smaller game.

I used to get the comment--"Oh, you carry the stuff the big guys don't." To which I answered, "Why do you think they don't carry them?" So telling me to carry the 80% of low selling games, but making it impossible to make money on the 20% that used to make most of the money, isn't the answer.

It's interesting to see the same mistakes made by the larger players over and over again. I tell you--it's tough to be a long-term business in a short-term world.