Angus and Robertson is one of the big leading book store chains in Australia. I'd say that for at least a time, they were the biggest but that may just have been my own perception. I used to shop there a lot as a kid and since then, they've been going downhill. Their stores are irritating and poorly stocked. Prices high.
Now this.
In short, A&R has sent a letter to many small publishers invoicing them for between $2,500 to $100,000 just to maintain a business relationship, stating these publishers' books are not bringing in an acceptable level of profit.
Of course, many people are very pissed off.
I for one can scarcely imagine a worse decision for A&R to make. It's laughable.
One such publisher, Tower records, has written a letter of reply that is just stunningly beautiful to read. It is, as someone commented, practically a literary work in itself.
I encourage you all to read it here, even if you don't have much of an interest in the story: http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/archives/undercover/014948.html
Here's some of it:
I have to say that my initial response on reading your letter as to how you propose to "manage" your business in the future was one of voluble hilarity, I literally burst out laughing aloud. My second response was to note the unmitigated arrogance of your communication, I could not actually believe I was reading an official letter from Angus & Robertson on an Angus & Robertson letterhead.
My reply to you will perforce be a lengthy one. I hope you will take the trouble to read it, you may learn something. Then again, when I look at the level of real response we have had from Angus & Robertson over the past six or so years, I somehow doubt it.
The first thing I would say to you is that arrogance of the kind penned by you in your letter of 30 July is an unenviable trait in any officer of any company, no matter how important that individual thinks himself or his company, no matter how dominant that company may be in its market sector. Business has a strange habit of moving in cycles: today's villain may be tomorrow's hero. It is quite possible to part from a business relationship in a pleasant way leaving the door open for future engagement. Sadly, in this case, you have slammed and bolted it.
More to the point, however, we have watched our business with Angus & Robertson dwindle year upon year since 2000. We had to wear the cost of sub-economic ordering from you through ownership changes, SAP installation, new management, and stock overhang. In summary our business with you has dropped from over $1.2 million at the end of 2000 to less than $600,000 in 2007.
You would be quite correct to question whether our offering to the market had changed in any way. The answer can be derived from the fact that during the same period our business with Dymocks, Book City, QBD and Borders continued to grow in double digits, our business with your own franchise stores has grown healthily, and our overall business during the same period has grown by more than 50%.
Go on. Read the rest. You'll enjoy it.
That was awesome. Ouch to them. :D
So that's what Rimmer's up to these days. I did wonder.
I enjoyed that correspondence highly. Never seen such a flagrant display of arrogance before.
I mean, he even set the time for their potential appointment! And he gave him 10 minutes! That's ace.
Quote from: Andail on Fri 10/08/2007 11:48:20I mean, he even set the time for their potential appointment! And he gave him 10 minutes! That's ace.
On the same day he's supposed to pay the invoice. The only worse time he could've picked was 12 hours later.
Yeh, this has got to be really embarrassing for A&R, but really, what were they thinking? I mean it can't have just been the brainchild of one person. Surely A&R have a board of people who all thought it was a good Idea... I cringe just thinking about it.
Call me a born skeptic ... but this seems like a BIG publicity stunt to me.
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Fri 10/08/2007 14:29:22
BIG publicity stunt
For whom?
A&R will get publicity but it's not going to be good. You can't blame the
publisher distributor for trying to shoe-horn in "Carpentaria" right at the end of his email though.
Sweet letter, and yes it might be a publicity stunt you never know :-\
I don't think the company I work for got one \o/. We are probably too important a supplier to lose to such stupidity.
EDIT: Although it appears to have been only Aus publishers aswell.
Quote from: Hudders on Fri 10/08/2007 15:02:56For whom?
There's no such thing as "bad" publicity.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if suddenly they announce that a disgruntled employee was responsible for this and that ... blah blah blah and now they've gotten all this press/attention.
Thing is that with such companies, and the book industry, not so many things are based on simmilar promotion as the one you suggest Darth. Not that it could be untrue, but I fail to see how it would benefit A&R to have their name heard. It's that you hear a name "Britney", and get to see pics, and hear something. Go google A&R. After that?
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Fri 10/08/2007 21:06:36There's no such thing as "bad" publicity.
I think this only counts for up-and-climbing
people, like Paris Hilton or something. However for a business, or OJ Simpson, it often does nothing but bad.
Companies will always have a hard time recovering from a bad reputation.
Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Fri 10/08/2007 21:06:36
There's no such thing as "bad" publicity.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if suddenly they announce that a disgruntled employee was responsible for this and that ... blah blah blah and now they've gotten all this press/attention.
I was actually thinking the same thing as I read their letter. Angus & Robertson cannot expect tactics that would admittedly work in Communist China to actually work in a capitalistic society. The response is absolutely correct, it seems that with such ridiculous demands the publisher would do much better to drop the supplier. In a controlled economy, the publisher wouldn't have much of a choice who to sell to. Fortunately in this economy, the publisher has plenty of choices, and would do much better to cut their losses (and a load of extra work) by telling Angus & Robertson to go screw themselves.
I still see this as a potential gimmick.
They come out and say, "We can assure you this didn't come from us blah blah blah ... of course we stand by our loyal customers and would never dream of blah blah blah" and then they now have a TON of attention.
Or:
They say, "We have replaced those on the board of directors that approved this regrettable action ... blah blah blah ... and we hope their unapproved actions ... blah blah blah ... continued prosperity between us and our valued suppliers ... blah blah blah"
I'm not sayin' it's so ... Just throwin' an idea out there. Something this blatently ignorant and completely devoid of any chance of success just seems fishy to me.
The fact that they left it to small/medium suppliers makes me think darth is right really. They couldn't afford to piss off a large supplier, but a small one might not beable to afford to lose the business just because of something like this.
QuoteSomething this blatently ignorant and completely devoid of any chance of success just seems fishy to me.
You try to sound jaded but really you're just an optimist!
(Never assume malevolence for what incompetence sufficiently explains...)
Quote from: Redwall on Sat 11/08/2007 00:24:00You try to sound jaded but really you're just an optimist!
Damn! I thought I had everybody fooled!
Quote from: Hotspot on Fri 10/08/2007 22:40:21
The fact that they left it to small/medium suppliers makes me think darth is right really. They couldn't afford to piss off a large supplier, but a small one might not beable to afford to lose the business just because of something like this.
What makes me laugh is that the return letter from the supplier makes it seem as though A&R is a smaller franchise. Which only increases the irony. It would seem that A&R, which has apparently been struggling, has just cut off their own head.
You'll also note that the letter said all of the "unprofitable" suppliers, which could very easily include large American publishers that have a small Australian presence. I wonder what American companies would say about this.
I also wonder if anyone will actually PAY A&R as a result of this letter?
There are more effective ways off getting publicity. And they don't involve alienating half of your distributors. I don't think this is a stunt or a gimmick. It's just plain bad management.
This usually happens when a company gets sold and switches owner. Buyer, the new owner only bought the company after seeing that it made large amount of profit, therefore he thinks its an easy business. Most of the companies that switch owners are doomed. Usually the founder of business founded the business because of he liked the subject that he produced and was comfortable with it, new owners see only money.
Our lockal candy factory switched owners, it used to be good, but now half of the candy mixtures have been changed and classical design wrappers are now this shiny commercial shit with no style at all.
Also, remember what happened to Atari, once it got sold...
This is beautiful. Thanks for posting :)
And yeah, this is probably a management issue. Australia is a different market to America in the respect that corporations aren't above the law; there's no chance that telling their bottom-line indie book suppliers to get stuffed will improve Angus and Robertson's already-marginalized image, any more than changing their name to "Books 'R' Us" and only offering volumes with a "New York Times Bestsellers List" boasting on the front would.
Addendum: Teresa Nielsen Hayden (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009263.html) appears to have nailed the problem. A terrible example of what can happen when you let beancounters start making all the management decisions for themselves.
As a small-time writer I got fairly pissed off with this whole situation, as small publishers = small-time writers = people like me being shafted.
I wrote an angry email, and I just got a response from A&R.
QuoteDear x,
Thank you for your email and for giving me an opportunity to respond to you directly.
I understand that you are concerned about the negotiations that Angus & Robertson is currently seeking with a number of its suppliers.
I would like to assure you that these negotiations are not intended to have any impact on Australian authors and are purely about reaching a commercial arrangement with publishers.
Angus & Robertson is a major retailer of Australian titles, with 30% of top selling lines made up by Australian authors. We stock an average of 10,000 individual titles in our smaller stores, considerably more in our larger stores, and over 80,000 active titles across our store portfolio. A substantial proportion of these titles are from Australian authors and publishers, and we maintain an extensive special order service fulfilling our customers’ needs for titles not stocked. It is vital for A&R, and equally in the interests of all Australian authors and publishers that we have a sustainable business that can continue supporting Australian authors and publishing over the long term.
Over the past three years we have invested over $14 million in the growth and expansion of our business to bolster the industry and ensure accessibility and value for our customers. Despite our best efforts, we too are under increasing pressure to survive as we are squeezed by discount department stores and online stores, resulting in our company-owned stores making an operating cash loss this year.
We need to make decisions that ensure we can continue to run a viable business and choosing the right suppliers is part of this. Unfortunately, we cannot work with every publisher in Australia , particularly if the relationship is not commercial.
To give you some context, we currently have 1,200 suppliers to our business and have sent letters to 47 of those whom we hope to hold discussions with over the coming weeks. The payments we have requested from those suppliers represent a gap payment for profits that were lost or costs that were incurred as a result of our commercial relationship with those particular suppliers.
I hope you can understand that we are trying to operate a successful bookstore chain and if we cannot strike a balance that allows us to maintain our retail operations, the impacts on the industry will be far greater if we are forced to close stores or drastically cut down titles.
Again, let me assure you that this is not about penalising authors. It is about establishing commercial arrangements with our suppliers that are viable for both parties and that allow us to offer the best value to our customers.
Over the past year we have hosted an increased number of in-store author events allowing our customers to meet and interact with new authors from smaller publishing companies, or those starting out with an initial book.
I do hope that this information may have settled your concerns. I assure you Angus & Robertson remains very committed to selling books from a large range of Australian publishers, large and small. I also assure you that we are dedicated to continuing to provide our customers with a wide variety of books to meet their needs.
Regards, [/b]personal information removed[/b]
While I still (as I did then) understand to a certain point WHY they're doing it, I still can't fathom HOW they got to the conclusion and actually go through with it, not even expecting negative publicity to come from this.
At least they responded. The guy who responded was the "Group Operating Officer", whatever that means.
Still pisses me off.. Grr..