Still struggling with the choice between ordering direct from publishers at 10 to 15% better margins but waiting ten days for the books to show up, or paying lower margins from Ingram and getting the books a a very timely couple days later.
Question is: how many sales are we missing during those eight days, multiplied by the basically 2/3rds of the books we're currently getting from publishers? A lost sale in not only about the lost profit, it's also a failure to meet the customer demand, and that's something you don't want to do too often.
When it was just Penguin Random House, I chose to order from only Ingram during Christmas. Makes no sense to order a book from PRH on the 10th of the month and at best have a couple days before Christmas to sell it. But that was only 1/3rd of the books, not 2/3rds.
The same is true during Summer. Really, there are only about eight or nine weeks of summer after July 4th, which is real kickoff for increased sales. So in 63 days, I can order books from publishers maybe 5 times, or I can order from Ingram more than twice as often. That's a lot more books in on a timely basis.
But there is another phenomenon going on. During summer and Christmas we are getting customers for which ALL the books in stock are new to them. They usually aren't coming in for specific titles, but for a wide selection.
And by ordering from each publisher each week, a wide variety of books are coming in all the time.
Ironically, it's more important to have every important book during the slower months because every customer and every sale counts.
This is Summer week is where I decide whether to switch from publisher ordering each week, knowing that each book I'm ordering will miss roughly 20% of the summer, or to ordering from Ingram and losing less than 10% of the selling period.
Of course, I can finesse this quite a bit. Often I'll order from both Ingram and publishers for books that I'll probably need more copies of. And the flow of product is so much stronger than it used to be that there is a better then even chance that if I don't have one title the customer wants, I'll have another.
So I'm sticking to the publisher discounts for now even though it will be a dagger in the heart every time a customer asks for a book we could have had in stock, but instead have to tell them, "It's on its way..."
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