News Off Topic: Will Books Continue To Be Published During Corona Virus?

[Desert Kris]

A couple days ago I received notice that an order from Mophidius had shipped, which is good. This is for an roleplaying game suppliment, but it still counts as a book. A more recent notification said that orders on or after today are not going to be able to ship for quite a while, best case in May. Good thing I ordered when I did. I wish I had jumped at the starter set sooner; now it's sold out and the supply line is running dry. I suppose it will be that much more exciting when it eventually becomes available again.

 

[DEWLine]

We hope and expect and plan thus.

 

[Reanok]

Barnes&Noble online are selling the upcoming Star trek books.

 

[JD]

That is the one advantage books have these days, I think the majority of their sales are online rather than at the brick and mortar stores.

It's all Marvel's fault.

Well, kind of.

See, there used to be a ton of comics distributors. There were two big ones -- Diamond and Capital City -- and a whole mess of smaller ones.

Then one year in the 1990s, Marvel decided to buy one of those smaller ones, Heroes World, and make it their exclusive distributor.

This was a disaster of epic proportions, as 1) Heroes World didn't have the infrastructure to suddenly become the only worldwide distributor of the largest comics company on the planet and 2) all the other distributors were suddenly denied their biggest customer.

In response, DC went exclusive with Diamond, thus costing all those other distributors their second biggest customer. Cap City and all the smaller distributors went out of business. Then Heroes World failed like a big, giant failing thing and was discontinued, and Diamond was literally the only distributor left standing.

That may be part of why they haven't been hit with any kind of monopoly penalty, because it really wasn't their doing, as such, they were just the only ones left after Marvel fucked up.

Wow, thanks that was an interesting bit of history.

Barnes & Noble will no longer be accepting magazines or news papers, per LocusMag https://locusmag.com/2020/03/newsstand-disruptions/

I note they mention they have curbside pickup, which is awesome to see.

Here in Canada, Chapters-Indigo, which is the largest bookstore chain in terms of both the internet and brick-and-mortar, has currently closed all its physical stores until March 27 (and in Ontario & Quebec), all non-essential businesses are under government orders to be closed till at least Easter. And who knows how much longer Canada Post and the other delivery companies will continue delivery. So up here, physical book releases might get delayed, since when you look at the list of “essential business”’s in Ontario, book sellers are not classified as an “essential business”. And just to clarify, about 40% of all-of-Canada’s population lives in Ontario. And from what I’ve seen of Quebec’s orders, book stores are also non-essential there, so adding in Quebec, you are looking at about 61% of Canada’s population not having a physical book store, like Chapters or Coles, for the next couple of weeks or longer, depending on how long these restrictions are in place.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-say...mid-covid-19-pandemic-is-adjustable-1.4865528

Yikes, neither of those are a good sign.

 

[2of1million]

Ebooks can always be published at least.

 

[The Wormhole]

And who knows how much longer Canada Post and the other delivery companies will continue delivery.

Canada Post has just issued a statement they will remain operating for the duration of this crisis.

 

[JD]

Ebooks can always be published at least.

The problem is that a lot of publishers like to keep their e-books and the paper books lined up, so if they do stop publishing paper books, there's a decent chance e-books would stop too.

 

[tomswift2002]

Canada Post has just issued a statement they will remain operating for the duration of this crisis.

That may be just from the Corporation, but if the government ordered Canada Post to stop delivery, then they would have to stop (during the 1918-1920 Flu epidemic, the mailman was one of the main spreaders of the flu).

But there is also the issue of the Canada-US border. Right now it is closed to non-essential traffic. So with Ontario andQuebec classifying book stores as non-essential, the border may not permit book shipments from the US.

And now 10 of Amazon’s warehouses around the world have workers with Covid-19, so who knows how long Amazon can continue shipping.

https://apple.news/ALAsGcFcQR1Camfq9w22s2g

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I just read over in the general SFF section that apparently a some the companies that print comics are shutting down due to the Corona virus outbreak, which means there will be no new comics coming out, at least in physical form, until this whole thing is resolved.

Nope. Diamond, which is a distributor, not a printer. They're pretty much the only game in town when it comes to comics distribution to the direct market (i.e. comic book shops). KRAD gave a good summary of the history involved earlier in the thread. The comic book industry has several pretty fucked up things about it, and the distribution system is a major one of them.

Diamond's founder Steve Geppi's full statement can be read here. But this has caused a domino effect that's forced many comics shops to suspend business and close their doors (hopefully temporarily, but it depends on how long these quarantines last and how big of a hit comics shops take). For the last few weeks, shops have been doing things like curbside pickup to help their customers who want to maintain social distancing. If you have a local shop you want to support, ordering stuff for your pull list & pre-paying for it is a great way to do it. You can also buy gift cards from them. Comics shops are mostly small local businesses, and they're going to need all the capital they can get to stay afloat.

From what I read, it's not that the printers have shut down, it's that Diamond, the main distributor of comics, has asked the printers to stop sending it new comics, which apparently is motivated by the economic slowdown.

Correct. And some of the people on the comics board I admin on Facebook were losing their shit on Monday because of this news.

The Department of Justice looked into Diamond for possible antitrust (monopoly) violations in the late 1990s, and concluded that because they had a monopoly only on comics rather than on all books or all periodicals, no legal action was necessary.

That's like saying, "Eh, we only have one studio distributing movies, but... we're sure it's going to be fine." Comics are a medium, not a genre. The comic book industry is not the same as the book industry, and it shouldn't automatically be considered the same thing. But I'd love it if the comic book industry took some more cues from the book business. Comics are decades behind the times in many ways.

That may be part of why they haven't been hit with any kind of monopoly penalty, because it really wasn't their doing, as such, they were just the only ones left after Marvel fucked up.

Yeah, but... That was back in the 90s, and Diamond is still the 500-pound gorilla in the room. It's high time that changed.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Here in Canada, Chapters-Indigo, which is the largest bookstore chain in terms of both the internet and brick-and-mortar, has currently closed all its physical stores until March 27 (and in Ontario & Quebec), all non-essential businesses are under government orders to be closed till at least Easter. And who knows how much longer Canada Post and the other delivery companies will continue delivery. So up here, physical book releases might get delayed, since when you look at the list of “essential business”’s in Ontario, book sellers are not classified as an “essential business”. And just to clarify, about 40% of all-of-Canada’s population lives in Ontario. And from what I’ve seen of Quebec’s orders, book stores are also non-essential there, so adding in Quebec, you are looking at about 61% of Canada’s population not having a physical book store, like Chapters or Coles, for the next couple of weeks or longer, depending on how long these restrictions are in place.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-say...mid-covid-19-pandemic-is-adjustable-1.4865528

I have just been told that Indigo, including the Indigo stores and Chapters and the small-format Coles, will be closed indefinitely across the country. I am going to have to apply for EI shortly.

I have serious concerns about the future of bookselling in Canada, and in the wider world.

 

[Mysterion]

I have serious concerns about the future of bookselling in Canada, and in the wider world.

I have a hunch that lot of brick and mortar bookstores won't survive the current unpleasantness. Barnes & Noble will probably be mostly ok, but I can see a lot of the smaller independent booksellers not being able to hold on for too long.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I have a hunch that lot of brick and mortar bookstores won't survive the current unpleasantness. Barnes & Noble will probably be mostly ok, but I can see a lot of the smaller independent booksellers not being able to hold on for too long.

Canada, for its part, is dominated by the Indigo chain. Is it too big to fail? May-be.

Smaller stores, agreed, are going to have a hard time. I am deeply concerned about Toronto's Glad Day and Bakka Phoenix, to name but two.

 

[JD]

I'm not sure about other places, but here there really aren't any independent book stores, other than used bookstores. We have several Barnes & Nobles around, and that's it now that Borders has been gone for a few years.

 

[tomswift2002]

Well considering that Trump is trying to get the army on the US/Canada border to stop all traffic, it may be a while before we see a new physical Trek release in Canada.