State of Flux

We still are not sure how we will be dealing with the fallout of losing our primary distributor.  We might be able to have one more order go out before Follett/Baker & Taylor leaves the retail market.  Once that happens, we don't know what to expect.  Aside from dealing with one distributor only, there will be many secondary problems that will pop up.  Along with shipping out books, Baker & Taylor provided online catalogs, two main ones as well as many secondary specialized ones.  While access to these catalogs might still be available, they may chose to discontinue them or limit their access.  The same holds true of their on-sale date lists.  We have using these lists to create both our Books page as well as our Upcoming Releases board sign in the store.  We have lists for the next two months, but we might not have anything to go on after that.  The library market isn't as strict in needing to know street dates for books.  Speaking of books, we should be able to continue to get most of your books, as well as many sideline supplies, but there could be some problems.  The biggest one would be for the customer.  We will have to have people pre-pay in total almost every book ordered.  We will not be able to get the books in otherwise, as we would need to pre-pay the distributor before shipping as well.  Also, shipping charges would be needed, especially if books are needed within a certain time.  Things are still up in the air, so stay tuned for official announcements of what we will be doing.  See you soon.

Where Did All the Books Go

As we mentioned on Facebook last week, our primary distributor, Follett/Baker and Taylor, has decided to leave the retail market to focus more on libraries and schools.  In a little over a month, we will no longer be able to place orders through them.  What does this mean?  First, if there are any books you want, we suggest placing the order as soon as possible.  Many backlist titles might no longer be carried, and some newer books might not be carried in some formats either.  Second, we will be needing to change some store policies.  From now on, we will be needing down payments in full for all books.  We will probably have to charge a shipping fee as well.  This will be due to the fact that the distributor we will be dealing with has a policy where we will have to pay for our orders before they are shipped.  Because of this, we will need most customers to pay for their books beforehand, as well as helping to cover any shipping fees incurred due to not placing a minimum order.  Lastly, we might not be able to keep going on, even with these new changes.  It will be difficult for us to place minimum orders and still have customers receive their products in a timely fashion.  While it is possible, some people might have long waits before we can place orders.  We are not sure just how long we will able to keep up once this takes place.  However, this is still month away before this takes place.  This will mark the third time in our store's history that we have had to change primary distributors.  Back in 2005, our first prime distributor, Koen, filed for bankruptcy, just before the sixth Harry Potter book came out.  Koen managed to hook us up with Baker and Taylor in time to get our order in time, even though the initial contact got delayed due to a missed phone call to our original contact number, instead of our current one.  Koen did get out of bankruptcy, but it only managed to go on as Koen-Levy for a year and a half or so, before going out of business.  Later on, about three years ago, Baker and Taylor either merged or got bought by educational book distributor Follett.  At first, there were only minor changes.  The biggest one was the discontinuation of their print catalogs in 2018.  Then, earlier this year, they ended their distribution of electronic media, which had been a cornerstone of their business for decades.  We didn't even get notice of this news directly either.  We found out about the ending of their retail division from an outside news article.  We are still recovering, so we don't know how everything will go, but we are trying to do something.  We appreciate both Baker and Taylor and our customers to do otherwise.  See you next time.