Australian bookstore chain fucks up

[radiowaves]

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...

[covox]

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 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.

[voh]

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.

Dear 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..