Recession kills the small guys first!
Found this on a forum. In the time of recession the first casualties are the small guys. Although the common sense says that the first casualties should be the big guys - small guys don't have investors on their backs pushing for growth at all costs, they are more flexible and adaptable to situations and so on. But the fact remains that all the systems are build for the advantage of big guns and it is with great difficulty that individuals or small publishers make their way in. So when the crunch time comes, they are the first ones to be thrown off the boat.
So the question arises - how do we build a recession proof distribution channel for the individual authors? Of course Amazon is already one option but how can we go beyond Amazon? And what about a country like India where digital divide is so huge - how can we use all the technology at our disposal and make publishing/books available to those who don't have access to it and miss it the most?
We've seen something devastating to small pubs happen here in Canada in the last month: Chapters / Indigo, the largest chain in the country (includes Coles and others) has removed any time limit that they have to return unsold books to distributors. For distributors who deal with small or independents, this is disastrous, because if Indigo returns a book 10 years from now, the distributor has to try and return the book to the publisher. If they bought the book from a self-publishing author, that's sometimes impossible. This means that many distributors are dropping self-pubs from their rosters altogether to avoid the cost overhead. (One of my authors was dropped a week before Christmas, just before we launched a huge online marketing campaign.) This means that self-publishing authors are now almost eliminated from the "normal" book-selling channel here in Canada, and will be forced to rely on Amazon as their retailer in almost all cases. I help all my authors with things like on-line direct sales, and affiliate programs, but the traditional channels are a major publicity outlet, if not a huge profit outlet. Indigo's policy stinks anyway - who could be helped by that except Indigo themselves? It's creating an elitist book market.
Something to chew on. Ideas are welcome. Execution, more so.
Comments
This story is about a man who once upon a time was selling Hotdogs by the roadside. He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers. He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio. His eyes were weak, so he never watched television. But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs.
He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales. His sales and profit went up. He ordered more a more raw material and buns and sold more. He recruited more supporting staff to serve more customers. He started offering home deliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove. As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from college, joined his father.
Then something strange happened.
The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?" The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times."
The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly. So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colorful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic. He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his Hotdog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly and so did the profit. The father said to his son, "Son, you were right". "We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned me ahead of time."
Moral of the Story: It's all in your MIND! And we actually FUEL this recession much more than we think
may be this is not totally related with whatever u hav written but it seems to be indirectly related. i found it somewhere.so i pasted it to u