Company News
Publisher's Weekly - May 9, 2011
4/13/11
By Chris Morrow
April 13, 2011
As the e-book revolution has undermined the publishing and bookselling business models, frustration, fear, and stagnation have set in. Instead of channeling this frustration into experimentation in publishing as a whole, almost all recent creativity has been directed to the digital world. It is understandable that such a disruptive technology as e-books would demand this attention, but as an industry we risk undermining the foundation of our success if we don't put some of that energy into nurturing, strengthening, and recreating the country's bookstores. It's time to restore a reasonable balance in terms of where time, energy, and money are directed: to take a fresh look at how publishers and booksellers can partner to sell more print books.
To continue to get the benefit of sales from titles discovered in bookstores, publishers will have to put some energy and creativity into experimenting with new ways to support bookstore sales. It is clearly in publishers' best interest to do so, as bookstores are their best marketing and sales outlets.
Fortunately, there are business models from other industries that we can examine, adapt, and experiment with.
Foremost among these is scan and pay. In the scan and pay model, vendors own the stock until the sale is made. This allows the retailer to optimize inventory and increase sales. The current model forces bookstores to minimize inventory, using books as cash flow pawns, resulting in tens of thousands of titles sitting in warehouses instead of in bookstores in front of customers. Optimizing inventory through scan and pay allows publishers and booksellers alike to sell more books. Chelsea Green, a forward-thinking publisher of books on sustainable living, has been experimenting with scan and pay with Northshire Bookstore and others for almost a year now; sales are up 262% on average. Our five-month experiment with Inner Traditions has shown a 396% sales increase. Books & Books has instituted very successful scan and pay agreements with Assouline and teNeues.
A hybrid version of scan and pay is significantly delayed payment terms. If we buy enough merchandise in January, the toy vendor Melissa & Doug will allow us to delay payment until December. They get their product on our shelves all year in much higher numbers than they otherwise would, with the resulting sales. We both benefit. I know there are a couple of publishers about to experiment with programs as substantive as this, and I know the results will be positive.
I'm sure there are many other ideas we can steal from other industries or invent ourselves that will increase sales and protect the crucial role bookstores play in the discovery and evangelizing of books, whether they are sold in print or in byte. The alternative is following in the footsteps of the music industry: substantially shrinking overall revenues.
Chris Morrow is general manager of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt.
Print Versus Pixels
Should green-minded readers switch to e-books?
By Margot Harrison
April 13, 2011
I love books. I still have the paperback of Wuthering Heights I bought in 1978 for 95 cents, though I can access its complete text on my iPhone. I remember the sights and smells of all my favorite bookstores and libraries, from Burlington to Boston to Berkeley to Paris. So, why am I considering buying an e-reader? Every day I’m confronted with the huge waste that paper books can represent. True, I’m in an unusual position: Publishers send books to newspapers gratis, unsolicited. As printing gets cheaper, each year seems to bring more review copies, many of which end up in leaning towers and bulging boxes. Where will they all go? I wondered the same thing years ago when I worked at a large bookstore chain. A customer would leave with a stack of 15 fat paperback romances and return a month later to sell them used. Books that didn’t sell at all went back to the publisher. Where would they go? Wouldn’t it be cleaner and greener just to download all those books in digital format? Yes, claims a 2009 study from Cleantech Group, covered by the New York Times in a blog post titled “Are E-Readers Greener Than Books?” Cleantech says its study “forecasts that e-readers purchased from 2009 to 2012 could prevent 5.3 billion kg of carbon dioxide in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period.” But are e-readers the solution to a rising tide of books? Or do they spell the end of the book? To find out, I talked with local authors, bookstore owners, librarians, a publisher and an expert on e-waste. I heard from people who love e-readers and people who revile them. I learned that the new tech doesn’t have to put you in thrall to Amazon. I also learned that, if you want to assuage your eco-conscience with a shiny new iPad or Kindle, forget it.... What do traditional publishers think of this shift? Margo Baldwin is president of Chelsea Green, based in White River Junction. She says about 5 percent of the eco-oriented publishing company’s net sales revenues currently come from e-books. But, says Baldwin, “there’s just a huge amount of change going on, and nobody in the business knows how it’s going to play out.” She believes “e-books will continue to grow and level off at some percentage of the business. They’re not going to displace printed books” — except “throwaway books,” she speculates. (Think of those romances.) Given her company’s focus on sustainability, Baldwin says, she can see the green side of e-readers. While Chelsea Green prints on recycled paper, that’s hardly standard industry practice. “There’s huge waste in the book-publishing industry,” Baldwin says. “To the degree to which e-books remove the need for every last book to be a printed book, I think that’s a positive thing.” The darker side of digitizing books, Baldwin notes, is a devaluing similar to what’s happened in the music business. “Because Amazon has so discounted e-books, in consumers’ minds, they think they shouldn’t have to pay more than that,” she says. “And a lot of them expect they should be paying the same price you would buy a song for on iTunes.” ... As a book reviewer, I still like the idea of cutting down on my work waste with digital galleys — although, says Baldwin, publishers are only gradually starting to offer that option. As a recreational reader, I’ve decided that when I get around to Infinite Jest, it will be someone else’s dog-eared discard. David Foster Wallace’s mega-opus is $10 from iBooks, but somehow I can’t envisage reading those 1088 pages on a device I don’t need to buy — my phone. “If you buy a book that’s already been read once,” says Ingenthron, “then probably your footprint is zero.” His best advice for preserving paper? "Buy somebody a library card."
Publisher's Weekly - October 11, 2010
Volume 257 Issue 40 10/11/2010
More than a Bookstore
Diversifying means moving beyond a cafe
By Judith Rosen
Oct 11, 2010
Just a decade ago, bookstores could add sidelines, events, and a cafe with a decent cup of coffee, maybe beer and wine, to boost sales. But with the economy limping along and e-book sales steadily rising, that's not necessarily enough any more. At this year's fall conference for the New England Independent Booksellers Association, three retailers spoke about other ways to expand a store's mission and increase margin.
For Chris Morrow, general manager of Northshire Books in Manchester Center, Vt., the answer to today's credit crunch being applied by publishers is consignment. "The old days of getting 60 or 90 days dating are gone," he says. "Nowadays, we use books as credit management." Lately he's been rethinking the returns model, and in mid-March Northshire began working with local Vermont publisher Chelsea Green on a dedicated area stocked on consignment. "Just the dynamic changes your attitude to your inventory," says Morrow. "We order what we want and send them a check within 15 days for the books that sold the previous month."
According to Chelsea Green president and publisher Margo Baldwin, both backlist and frontlist, especially of food and gardening titles, are doing well under the arrangement. Even excluding big event titles, Chelsea Green's sales at Northshire have gone up 225% over the past six and a half months. In fact, the consignment program has been so successful that Chelsea Green plans to expand it and will have a dozen consignment stores this fall, including the King's English in Salt Lake City and Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, N.H.
"The smart publishers that don't have credit issues can use their cash positions as a selling tool," says Morrow, who will start stocking another Vermont press, Inner Traditions, on consignment in mid-October. Northshire also has a 250-sq.-ft. boutique in its children's section for Zutano infant and toddler clothing, which it sells on consignment.
Susan Novotny, owner of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, N.Y., and Market Block Books in Troy, N.Y., wants to increase margin and control costs by publishing the books that sell best in her store and other independents. Five years ago, she started a POD business with Eric Wilska, owner of the Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass. Since then Troy Book Makers, near her store in Troy, has printed 360 titles by 300 authors and will turn a profit for the first time in 2010. Even though Novotny and Wilska actively promote the POD books through local author displays at the Bookloft and signings at Market Block, she finds that operating a POD is a wholly separate business from a bookstore.
At this year's BEA, she launched Staff Picks Press, which, says Novotny, is more of a collaboration between author and bookseller. "The concept," she adds, "is to look in your own backyard." Her first selection, Change: A Story for All Ages by Judith Barnes and Erick James, with illustrations by Jeff Grader, appeared this summer as a paperback original and could be picked up by one of four larger houses interested in republishing it in hardcover. In November, Staff Picks will publish journalist Peter Golden's novel about two lovers who came of age in the '60s, Come Back Love, which he promoted at NAIBA and NEIBA. But Novotny doesn't want to choose all the books for the press. She views it as an opportunity for other booksellers to publish their own "staff picks" and act as an agent, earning a commission. "Look at the last book that won the Pulitzer Prize," she says. "[The publisher] only paid him $1,000. We're really a lot stronger than we think we are."
Although WEBS, America's Yarn Store, in Northampton, Mass., is obviously not a bookstore, the 36-year-old retailer, one of the two largest independent yarn stores in the country, faces many of the same problems as bookstores and has met them by trying to do everything better. It's a family business now run by the second generation, Steve and Kathy Elkins, and sells new and bargain (or closeout) yarns, as well as craft books. It works, says Steve Elkins, because of a combination of bricks-and-mortar and Web. Every page of the 16,000-sq.-ft. store's Web site (yarn.com) has a place for customers to sign up for the mailing list, and there is even an Ask the Elkins section, where customers can contact the owners directly. In addition, the Elkins do a weekly half-hour radio show, Ready, Set Knit!, with interviews and knitting and crochet tips, that they repackage as podcasts. The podcasts, which cost $15,000 a year to produce, average 8,000 downloads a week on iTunes, or roughly 410,000 downloads a year. It doesn't have to cost a lot to be more than just a "bookstore," but it does take time, as Elkins points out.
Publishing Talks: David Wilk Interviews Margo Baldwin
April 25, 2010
From Publishing Talks:
In this series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I have been talking to book industry professionals about the future of publishing, books, and culture. This is a period of disruption and change for all media businesses.
How will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and its economics? Publishing Talks interviews help us understand the outlines of what is happening, and how we might ourselves interact with and influence the future of publishing as it unfolds…
In our Publishing Talks conversation, Margo talks about the history of Chelsea Green, where it is today, and where her vision of publishing will lead the company in the future as it tries to carry out its bold and important mission. The recently announced partnership between Chelsea Green and Vermont’s Northshire Books is a great example of the creative thinking that Margo and her company are practicing.
The Huffington Post - January 2010
The Death and Rebirth of the Slush Pile, by Brianne Goodspeed
Reading Kathrine Rosman's WSJ article about the death of the slush pile - and how it's harder than ever to get a manuscript over the transom - I was struck by yet another example of how removed Big Publishing is from day-to-day humanity.
Here's my point of view: I've been the Chelsea Green Publishing Girl Friday -handling the slush pile - for the last two years. And, much as I dread the number of unsolicited submissions that are about to flood my inbox, I might as well say it: We've stumbled upon some terrific proposals that way. On our spring list alone, we have four books that we plucked from the slush pile.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that Chelsea Green has relaxed standards. Our books have rocketed to the New York Times best-seller list and our backlist is robust. We're a recognized leader for our social networking strategy and we are publishing some of the most critical books of our time. (Do I sound proud? I am.)
So, if the big guys can't even spare the time to open their emails, how and - perhaps more importantly - why do we? (Hint: It's not because we have to.)
Well, for starters, we don't publish fiction. We publish books on sustainability. So it's probably a little quicker to spot a capable writer. Simple enough.
This local publisher is changing the world, one book at a time
Just over the border in Vermont is a company that really lives up to its name. Chelsea Green, based in White River Junction, has been publishing books on sustainable living for 25 years, and it’s a company that practices what it preaches: It’s taken steps to reduce natural resource and energy use by printing most of its books on chlorine-free recycled paper with soy-based inks.
The company was founded in 1984 by Margo and Ian Baldwin, who had moved to Vermont from New York City. According to Taylor Haynes, the company’s marketing coordinator, the Baldwins wanted to “work together on something creative and also make a living, as good jobs were not so easy to find.” The Baldwins named the company after the Vermont town they lived in, Chelsea, which was known as “Chelsea Green” because it had two greens instead of one, Haynes says.
One of the first books Chelsea Green published was “The Man Who Planted Trees,” an ecological fable. Since then, the company has published more than 400 titles, including the New York Times bestsellers “The End of America,” by Naomi Wolf, and “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency,” by Robert Kuttner.
The company has evolved since its early days: What was once a startup now employs 21 people and is seen as the preeminent publisher of books on sustainable living. Its book topics run the gamut, including organic gardening and local agricultural movements, natural science and ecology, green building and renewable energy and political activism and social commentary.
Publishers Weekly, June 29, 2009
In advance of next week’s ALA convention, Chelsea Green went live today with an online gift registry at chelseagreen.com/company/libreg to enable libraries to let their patrons know which titles from the White River Junction, Vt.-based press it would like. Library patrons can go online and view the Web-based wish lists and then order a title from Chelsea Green, known for its green and sustainable living titles and political books, that they can contribute to a library's collection. In addition, any registered member of the Chelsea Green online community will be notified if their local library sets up a list. Books purchased for libraries are available at a 40% discount off the suggested retail price, free freight. As a thank-you gift, Chelsea Green will also ship personal orders placed with a library purchase free freight.
Under the Chelsea Green Library Gift Registry program, librarians can choose from the more than 350 titles on the company’s backlist. To encourage librarians to sign up, Chelsea Green will enter everyone who signs up between July 9 and 15 (either at ALA or online from their hometowns) in a raffle to win $500 worth of Chelsea Green titles.“Libraries have been struggling in these challenging times, and this is one way we can help them stay competitive and current,” commented Chelsea Green sales director Peg O’Donnell.
Sentient Times - June 18, 2009
Editors Note Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition, The Winter Harvest Handbook, and Living Above the Store
“Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman, a passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago.”
Publishers Weekly- June 10, 2009
Toward a Greener Future
“Most industry members expected that when the “Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry” survey was released, it would show that, of all the activities connected with book publishing, the industry's use of paper has the biggest impact on the environment. They just didn't know how large that impact would be.”
Publishers Weekly - June 10, 2009
Sold—and Not Even to the Highest Bidder
“Watching the AMS-PGW debacle unfold makes me wonder why so many independent publishers are willing to be pawns in the increasingly lose-lose game of book distribution. Being auctioned off in a bankruptcy proceeding does not equal independence. Or handing over your most important business functions—sales, customer relations, fulfillment, and the tracking and collecting of your receivables—to a third party over which you have absolutely no control. Is this a smart way of doing business? What's independent about being part of a $100- or $300-million-a-year sales operation?”
Publishers Weekly - June 10, 2009
Zero-Waste Publishing
“Rachel Donadio's recent essay in the New York Times Book Review, "Saving the Planet, One Book at a Time," misses the point. Donadio asks how much the publishing industry is willing to pay to be virtuous. The question really should be: How much is the publishing industry willing to lose by continuing in its wasteful ways?”
Publishers Weekly - June 10, 2009
The Audacity of Hype
“On August 15, tiny but politically mighty Chelsea Green Publishing announced it will crash Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. Margo Baldwin, publisher of the Vermont-based house, said her objective was to get the pro-Obama book by journalist Robert Kuttner out in time for this week's Democratic convention. To that end, Chelsea Green is producing 2,000 advance copies; because the convention expects 15,000 attendees, the publisher planned to give the rest of them coupons redeemable for a $13.95 pre-pub POD edition from Amazon's Book Surge.”
IBPA Independent (formerly PMA) - June 10, 2009
Partnership Publishing: A New Model for Independents
“Last fall we managed to do the impossible (for a small independent publisher, that is): publish a book that became an almost instant national bestseller and has sold over 175,000 copies in six months’ time. The book is Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate–The Essential Guide for Progressives, by George Lakoff, University of California professor of cognitive science and linguistics, founding senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute, author of Moral Politics and other books, and, according to Howard Dean, "one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement."”
Book Business Magazine - June 10, 2009
A Green Celebration
“Green was the fashionable color on Monday evening, March 10, as more than 200 publishing industry executives gathered for a unique celebration in the Marquis Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis in New York’s Times Square, during the Publishing Business Conference & Expo. It wasn’t an early St. Patty’s Day celebration either, but a celebration honoring the recipients of the 2nd Annual SustainPrint Leadership Awards, recognizing achievements and leadership in “green” publishing.”
Book Business Magazine - May 18, 2009
Cover Story : 50 Top Women in Book Publishing
“From multimillion-dollar acquisitions to multimillion-dollar best-sellers, powerful women stand at every pivotal, decision-making point in the book publishing process. Book Business’ first annual “50 Top Women in Book Publishing” feature recognizes and honors some of these industry leaders who affect and transform how publishing companies do business, and what—and how—consumers read.”
Edible Santa Fe - Heritage Radio Network - April 8, 2009
Eco-libris Blog - February 18, 2009
Culture Change -January 26, 2009
Secession: Why I Support A Second Vermont Republic by Ian Baldwin
MountainKeepers Blog - January 6, 2009
Book Business Magazine - December 22, 2008
Barre Times Argus - November 3, 2008
Between the Lines What's up for Vermont book lovers "Chelsea Green Publishing must know something we don't. The White River Junction company says it has a full-page ad scheduled to run in The New York Times on the assumption that Barack Obama will win Tuesday's election. The ad promotes Robert Kuttner's book laying out the tests that President Obama will face. It's called ""Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transforma-tive Presidency."" Chelsea Green apparently isn't the only one reading the tea leaves: The company says that Kuttner is being interviewed in the New Yorker's post-election Barack Obama issue.
Future Perfect Publishing- August 29, 2008 - Interview with Margo
Huffington Post - August 20, 2008
GoGreenLife.com - July 1, 2008
Ready to Write That Green Book? - June 13, 2008
Sundance Channel - The Green - June 9, 2008
Green-Trust.Org - June 9, 2008
Publishers Weekly - May 22, 2008
The IdeaLogical.company - May 13, 2008
Book Business Magazine - April 28, 2008
Eco-libris Blog - April 25, 2008
Publishers Weekly - February 26, 2008
Publishers Weekly - February 26, 2008
“Coming in June from Chelsea Green distribution client Green Publishing is Charles Dowding's Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot.”
frugalmarketing.com - January 16, 2008
“Today, I had a reason to get very angry with a large New York publisher–and it got me thinking about how lucky I was to work with Chelsea Green for my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World.”
Green Press Initiative - September 13, 2007
“In addition to using environmentally responsible papers, book publishers can strive to reduce returns, which would make a big impact on waste reduction. One company that has already developed an extensive ‘no returns’ option is Chelsea Green.”
The Victrolist Blog - July 22, 2007
“I have grown used to seeing statements about recycled paper or acid-free paper in various places on books and websites, but this is the first time I've seen something so thorough and encouraging.”
“Remember that 30% of all new books are printed, shipped to a warehouse, then shipped to a store, or to a wholesaler, and then returned to the publisher or distributor warehouse and finally shipped out again to a remainder wholesaler or retailer, or shipped to a recycler or landfill.”
Publishers Weekly - July 16, 2007
“Eighteen major independent booksellers have signed on to the Chelsea Green Partnership Program, introduced at BookExpo America this year, reports company president Margo Baldwin, and she hopes to interest the chains in the program as well.”
“‘The left-right thing has got to go,’ declares Ian Baldwin, cofounder of Chelsea Green Publishing and publisher of Vermont Commons. ‘We’re decentralists and we are up against a monster.’”
Reading Under the Covers blog - June 26, 2007
“I was supposed to meet a workshop alum at the Sounds True booth at 4, then an author I'd been corresponding with at the Chelsea Green booth at 5, where I was also meeting up again with Digby Diehl.”
American Booksellers Association
Bookselling This Week - June 20, 2007
“The new Chelsea Green Partner Program, unveiled at BookExpo America, features a carbon-neutral shipping model and other incentives for participating booksellers who, among other requirements, must agree to purchase Chelsea Green books on a nonreturnable basis.”
Reading Under the Covers blog - June 16, 2007
“After ducking out of the Editors Buzz Forum, I met up with Renaissance man Digby Diehl (author, reviewer, TV correspondent, former head of Harry N. Abrams, journalist, etc.), who was to be my date for the Chelsea Green party honoring Naomi Wolf, author of THE END OF AMERICA: Letters to a Young Patriot (coming out in August).”
“Boasting over 400 titles, Chelsea Green includes high profile political titles like Don’t Think of an Elephant, inspiring fables like The Man Who Planted Trees, and important how-to guides like The Strawbale House on its list.”
Shelf Awareness - May 30, 2007
“From an appearance on NBC Nightly News by President Bill Clinton, who shared his personal endeavors for reducing energy consumption, to the proposed development of an environmentally conscious town in Florida, recent media coverage has led to increased consumer awareness of environmental topics. ”
Shelf Awareness - May 30, 2007
“Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vt., is launching what could be the next big industry trend: an initiative to begin "greening" the book business. ”
Knitting on the Sunnyside blog - May 30, 2007
“I am totally in love with Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardens, two of the best reasons to buy those 20 acres before we can afford to build on them. But in the meantime, despite not having an inch of land to grow on, Eric Toensmeier's book, Perennial Vegetables makes it easy to dream, and if you do have a plot of land, it's an easy first step in the right direction.”
Vermont Daily Briefing Website - May 17, 2007
“Actually, in this case, Publisher Shay Totten is moving on to greener pastures. Substantially greener: he’ll be the new editorial director at Chelsea Green Publishing. ”
Vermont Commons - May 17, 2007
“Chelsea Green is fortunate to pick up Shay as their new Editor in Chief, but Vermont's journalism landscape will be the poorer for VG's demise.”
Vermont Guardian - May 16, 2007
“WINOOSKI — The Vermont Guardian, which earlier this year became the state’s only exclusively online newspaper, will cease publication this month.”
Vermont Guardian - May 15, 2007
“The shift in title represents Chelsea Green’s desire to provide new ways for authors and readers to connect through emerging and existing multimedia tools such as online video and pod casts, as well as expanded online content through the company’s existing website and blog, said Chelsea Green’s Publisher Margo Baldwin.”
MamaStories blog - May 10, 2007
“Their motto is ‘The politics and practice of sustainable living,’ and their titles reflect the broad range that it brings to mind: from the reflective to the political to the practical.”
Barre Times Argus - April 18, 2007
“From its humble beginnings in 1984 as a small town cottage industry, the house has established itself as the pre-eminent publisher of books on sustainable living.”
The Valley News - April 29, 2007
Margo Baldwin, president and publisher of Chelsea Green, one of the Upper Valley's best known companies, enjoys tough challenges. In the 1990s, she had stepped back from the business to spend more time with her family. When the business started to founder, Baldwin returned in 2002 and turned the company around. She also refocused it on environmental stewardship and politics.
Now Baldwin has taken on a new challenge: She'd like to convince the publishing industry to transform itself to a "zero-waste publishing" model.
I had always assumed that bookshops took books that were no longer new or selling as well as they used to and moved them from one shelf to another to put them on sale, just as clothing retailers do. Not true.
"That would make too much sense," Baldwin said.
Here's what actually happens: The publisher ships new books to a store. Unsold books are shipped back to the publisher by the store. The publisher then sells these unsold books to a remainder dealer and ships it there. Bookstores then order these unsold books from the remainder dealer, which ships them back to the original store. "It is a completely insane system," said Baldwin who would like to see the industry move to a non-return sales model, a change that the big publishing companies refuse to adopt.
The resistance to that model doesn't make any sense to Baldwin. "We already sell in this way to the big online bookstores such as Amazon," she said. "Amazon has perfected an electronic system of on-demand ordering and selling in which computers predict the following week's demand and order accordingly. There is absolutely no reason why other stores cannot have access to the same technology."
This convoluted way of doing business also damages the environment. According to the Association of American Publishers, global gross sales of consumer books in 2004 were 1.4 billion units. Almost a third (around 434 million) were returned unsold. Assuming half (217 million) of the unsold books were shipped out again from the "remainder houses," Chelsea Green has calculated that an extra 1,305 million pounds of books had to be shipped an extra 59 million miles using 8.4 million gallons of diesel fuel and releasing 188 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"And that doesn't even account for the energy and environmental costs of the remaining 217 million books that are dumped, usually in to a landfill," Baldwin said.
She wrote an article for Publishers Weekly last August that documented the waste and extra energy consumption the current publishing model requires and proposed that the industry change its existing practice and sell to stores on a non-returnable basis only.
I'd always thought it was the large chain bookstores that dictated the conditions under which they would purchase books from a publisher. "Absolutely not," Baldwin told me. "It is the other way around. The publishers are the ones that insist on selling books on a non-returnable basis to keep their market share and work off their cash flow. Their mantra is: Get out as many books as you can and keep billing."
The reaction to Baldwin's article was lukewarm. Some of the smaller publishers and stores were in favor but the big publishers were not. Convinced that the rest of the industry will eventually come around, Chelsea Green has decided to move out front and will announce its new "green" publishing model in June at the Book Expo in New York — the publishing industry's annual gathering. "At the Expo, we will announce our 'Green Bookselling Partnership Program,' and that we already have seven key independent booksellers that have joined it," Baldwin told me.
Chelsea Green, which publishes its books on recycled paper only, is introducing a non-returnable model with built-in monetary and environmental benefits for the booksellers: The company will give the participating booksellers a larger than normal discount, pay for shipments to the stores (that adds around 7 percent to the stores' margins), and make the entire transaction as close to carbon-neutral as possible by buying offsets to balance the shipments' estimated carbon release.
"The stores that join our Green Partnership will get first dibs on our authors and there will be additional benefits that we will build in as the model gets under way," Baldwin said. "And if the books are not coming back to us, we cut that out from the environmental costs also."
It is a bold gamble, but I believe Chelsea Green is on the right track. Consumers have already shown they will pay a slight premium to buy environmentally friendly items, and major companies (think Volvo, Wal-Mart, Conoco, British Petroleum, Toyota) have begun to transform their brands and practices to more eco-friendly ones. “In our view, going green is not only the moral thing to do in an age of global warming and peak oil, it's the only viable economic thing to do if we're to survive and thrive in a future of skyrocketing energy costs,” Baldwin said.
Sooner or later the rest of the book industry, with its increasingly slim margins, also will discover that on today's balance sheets green is the new black. It will be fun then to say, oh yes, it all started back in the Upper Valley, where this small publishing company called Chelsea Green placed a calculated bet to buck the industry.
Sarwar Kashmeri is the author of the recently released book: America & Europe After 9/11 and Iraq: The Great Divide. He is a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, a strategic communications adviser, and lives in Reading, Vt. Your comments may be posted on the Business Climate blog: www.sakbizcol.blogspot.com.
by Sarwar A. Kashmeri
For The Valley News, 4.29.07
