Books News: Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales

“All of the sudden, there’s just no capacity,” said the literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb, who represents Ms. Halliday. “The books that become outliers, the ones that are actually selling, then they become a victim of their own success.”

The backlog is so severe that it is spilling over into next year, causing publishers to shift the release dates for some January books because they can’t print copies in time. At Penguin Random House, at least a dozen titles scheduled for early 2019 have been pushed back, typically by a few weeks, according to a company executive. Other publishers said that a handful of titles were being delayed because of the backlog at the printers.

“In the macro, business is healthy and there are plenty of books on shelves across America for people to buy,” said Michael Cader, a book industry analyst and the founder of Publishers Marketplace. “But if it’s your book and there’s demand and it’s out of stock, that’s very painful.”

Every year during the holidays, a handful of unexpected breakout books sell out of stock, frustrating consumers and the authors who wrote them, but leaving the industry as a whole unscathed. But this year the shortages are more widespread, and the factors driving them are more systemic and harder to mitigate.

“It’s more complex than it’s been in the past. You can’t just count on making a phone call to your printer and saying this book is taking off, let’s do a press run this week,” said Adam Rothberg, senior vice president of corporate communications at Simon Schuster. “This is the new normal for the foreseeable future.”

Madeline McIntosh, the chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., said that most of the company’s in-demand titles were available through other outlets, despite being out-of-stock at some major retailers, and noted that “at this time of year, we are always working through issues related to spiking holiday demand for hot books.”

The biggest cause of the bottleneck, publishers and agents say, is consolidation and collapse among printing companies. One large printing company, Edward Brothers Malloy, shut down this summer. Next year, two of the largest printers in the United States, Quad Graphics and LSC Communications, are expected to merge, which publishers worry will lead to fewer options for printing services.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/books/paper-printers-holiday-sales-books-publishers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss