I see someone's beaten me to sending you the link.

I'll note that I visit Australia regularly as some of my family live there, and I'd noted the decline of A&R as a chain -- the local small town franchisee is still an excellent bookshop with a decent range given its physical size, but the nearest big town direct-owned shop has over the last few years turned into something that looks like one of those specialist remainder shops, only without the enticement of the large and quirky range. The above exchange of letters explained a lot...

Posted August 10, 2007 1:40 PM by Julia Jones

Patrick and I both had goldfish-faces while we were reading the story. My only regret is that Rimmer's letter is so badly chopped up by my explanations that you don't get its full impact.

Posted August 10, 2007 1:46 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Wow. Who does that Rimmer guy think he is -- Dick Cheney?

Much praise to Michael Rakusin for his letter and for making both communications public.

Posted August 10, 2007 1:51 PM by Lizzy L

When I wrote about this in my LiveJournal, I noted that people don't get many opportunities to write a letter like the one Michael Rakusin has here. It's a rare delight to lay out this level of smackdown.

"Cap in hand." Heh.

Posted August 10, 2007 1:57 PM by Harry Connolly

I caught this over on Smart Bitches and wondered about your take on it.

I know that Australia had a large initial population of theives and criminals, but I didn't believe highway robbery was still in vogue.

Posted August 10, 2007 1:59 PM by Sisuile

Wheee! In the thread early. Do I really get to be the first person to say it?

This Rimmer fellow, I think he might be a smeghead.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:11 PM by Daniel

The pattern resembles stuff happening here in the UK, with the supermarket companies putting a lot of pressure on their suppliers. As you point out, books ain't bricks, or breadloaves. In one instance I know of, a farmer producing strawberries switched from supplying the supermarkets to supplying the local wholesalers. He had found that he could sell at the same price, and make more money.

There were two big reasons for this. He was selling perishable goods to the supermarkets on a sale-or-return basis, and the local wholesalers and retailers accepted the risk of not selling all that they bought.

Second, he turned up with a pallet of strawberries on his pickup, unloaded, and drove off with the payment. Cash or cheque, he didn't have to wait thirty days for the supermarket (who had the cash for over three weeks).

As for the customers, I'm pretty sure that the strawberries spent too long going through the supermarket's distribution system.

Remember, the Asda supermarket business in the UK is now owned by Walmart. As Charlie Stross reminded me, Walmart have made official complaint of unfair competion.

We didn't manage to send all the thieves to Australia.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:11 PM by Dave Bell

the beancounters reply, would it not make more sense to only publish the bestsellers?

(shakes head)

Wow. Yet another example of people treating a business as generic inputs and outputs of money requireing no knowledge of the actual product.

Rakusin's reply was awesome.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:13 PM by Greg London

It’s tacky and stupid and self-defeating....

"Evil" is the word that comes to my mind, but maybe that's overly judgmental.

I've seen two bookstores -- neither of them parts of chains -- that stocked only (well, mostly) bestsellers. In both cases it was the penultimate stage in a lengthy, drawn-out death spiral where the stores tried to cut costs by reducing the stock they had, and then got fewer customers (why go when there was less & less chance they'd have the book you were looking for, nor interesting ones you'd not heard of?), and therefore made less money, and had to cut costs some more. The end of this cycle, obviously, is having no costs through having no books, no space -- no store.

All of which is to say, I think that having only bestsellers is the bookstore's equivalent of a death-rattle.

And, in this case, it looks like Mr. Rimmer was the one in the dining room with the candle stick.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:16 PM by Stephen Frug

Gulp. What a horrible way to run a chain store.

As a customer, this actually makes me feel better about US chain stores. I mean, whatever bad things you might say about Borders or Amazon, you certainly can't deny that they have lots and lots of different books.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:17 PM by Eric

I hope that Mr. Rakusin had the foresight to keep a copy of his reply, printed on archival-quality paper. It would look very nice placed next to Mr. Rimmer's original letter in a frame.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:20 PM by mjfgates

I really don't understand the bookselling business. Publishers create the content. Book stores are the middle men. There are plenty of middle men, and these days publishers can connect directly to their consumers. Book stores need publishers, not the other way around. How do they manage to dictate terms to their suppliers like that?

Oh, well. Aside from boycotting Waldenbooks, I've lost count of the bookstores I should and should not be supporting. Very few seem to have a clue.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:25 PM by Remus Shepherd

The next time I get a condescending letter which needs a response I am going to be sure to include the phrase "voluble hilarity."

Bravo, Mr. Rakusin.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:32 PM by Linkmeister

IANABIINDIPOOTV (I am not a book industry insider, nor do I play one on TV) but this seems an awful lot like someone taking over a hardware store and saying "Lots of stores sell nails, competition is high, profit margins are low, let's stop selling nails and replace it with something we can make more money on."

Of course then word gets around that Joe's hardware store doesn't carry nails and all the contractors and DIYers who are their best customers stay away in droves.

I can't help but link this up with the sidelight on Nardelli taking over at Chrysler, not to mention a thread some years ago about how President Bush is typical of Harvard Business School grads from his era. These people really believe that a knowledge of finance is the most important thing to running any business, and actually knowing anything about the business in question is only going to distract you from focusing on what's really important (i.e. the next quarterly earnings report).

Posted August 10, 2007 2:34 PM by Chris W.

Eric (10), that was our reaction: whatever Leonard Riggio's up to this time, he's not trying to artificially reduce the range and variety of books B&N carries.

mjfgates (11), I just hope Rakusin autographed Rimmer's ass before he handed it to him.

Remus (12), believe me, publishers need bookstores.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:35 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Linkmeister @ 13... I am going to be sure to include the phrase "voluble hilarity."

Don't forget to use the word 'malarkey'.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:41 PM by Serge

Teresa @ 15... autographed Rimmer's ass

This is starting to sound like an episode of Red Dwarf.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:45 PM by Serge

Remus Shepherd (#12): Don't forget to boycott Borders, then; it's all part of the same company. (Also Brentano's, if there are any of those left.)

Posted August 10, 2007 2:53 PM by Christopher Davis

I fired my accountant for that. In the process of dispensing with his services I used the word shakedown several times. I think it's applicable in this case too....

Posted August 10, 2007 2:54 PM by Juno

It belatedly occurs to me that I did just get a letter which merits the phrase. Talking Points Memo has a copy as well.

Posted August 10, 2007 2:56 PM by Linkmeister

I'm really trying not to laugh out loud at the shitheaded audacity of Rimmer's letter, and the way Rakusin completely dismantled him in his response. (Were I not at work, I'd just let loose with the guffaws...) I particularly like the three examples of "Here are other companies that tried to pull this crap with us. You're one of them. It didn't work last time, either."

Bravo, Mr. Rakusin.

Posted August 10, 2007 3:01 PM by DarthParadox

I've only gotten a few lines in, but:

"Dear Michael"

Tacky. When you’re sending a formal blackmail request, you should always use the recipient’s full name.

Gosh, I adore you.

I think I'm going to like this Mr. Rakusin fellow, too.

Posted August 10, 2007 3:11 PM by elise

Rakusin is politely refraining from mentioning that Tower Books is the publisher of Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria, the 2007 winner of a major Australian literary award.

Sorry, but--I see in the signature that that book has won the Miles Franklin literary prize, which is mentioned in the paragraph above your note. Am I missing something?

Posted August 10, 2007 3:12 PM by Melanie S.

According to an edit made on a comment in that SMH thread:

A small point of correction: Tower Books is the distributor of the Miles Franklin winner, Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (ie the company that ships it out to bookshops around the country). The publisher is Giramondo, a small Sydney press owned by Ivor Indyk and Evelyn Juers and run from the University of Western Sydney. They publish a very small number of books but interesting, ambitious, often uncommercial and yet a high proportion of award-winners.

Man, I've never been to Australia, but this makes me want to go just so I can not buy books from A&R. Thankfully the high cost of airfare makes me just give them a virtual raspberry.

Posted August 10, 2007 3:41 PM by Dorothy Rothschild

A while ago I finished a contract, and my co-workers very nicely had a whip-around and sent me off with a book voucher as a going away present. It was for Angus and Robersons, a place I hadn't been to for years.

I actually found it hard to spend. The city branch of A&R is big enough, and stocks many good books. Unfortunately the psychic fug emitted by the many thousands of mediocre and pointless books which lined the walls dampened my book buying senses, and I wandered around there for hours in a low grade depression, until I picked a couple of books at random, and made a dash for the outside world. And God knows, it's not as if Melbourne's not a good place to buy books.

I think Julia Jones nailed it in the first post when she compared the stock to a specialist remaainder shop - they lean quite heavily towards "Golfing for cats"(*). It's a pity - when I was a kid, growing up in regional Australia, A&R was where you went to get books.

(*) A book by comedian Alan Coren. It had a swastika on the cover. Inside he talked about how market analysis had shown that the three biggest selling categories in the book trade were sport, pets, and the third reich, so... Of course, *he* knew he was making a joke.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:08 PM by Steve Taylor

Pricelesser and pricelesser: A&R responds to concerned readers

I understand that Crikey and its readers are alarmed by the negotiations that Angus & Robertson is currently seeking with a number of its suppliers. I also understand that the correspondence sent to some of our suppliers has caused offence.

I completely acknowledge that the tone of this correspondence was inappropriate, and I appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight on our intentions.

Firstly, I would like to assure you that the negotiations that are taking place between Angus & Robertson and our suppliers are not intended to have any impact on Australian authors and are purely about reaching a commercial arrangement with publishers...

As a commercial business, we have the right to make decisions about which suppliers we do business with. In our negotiations with suppliers, we are the customer. Unfortunately we cannot work with every publisher in Australia, particularly if the relationship is not commercially viable for us.

To give you some context, we currently have 1,200 suppliers to our business and have sent letters to 47 of those whom we hope to hold discussions with over the coming weeks. The payments we have requested from those suppliers represent a gap payment for profits that were lost or costs that were incurred as a result of our commercial relationship with those particular suppliers...

Posted August 10, 2007 4:12 PM by julia

The company's COO has responded, in order to 'set the record straight'. Yup. It includes paragraphs like:

To give you some context, we currently have 1,200 suppliers to our business and have sent letters to 47 of those whom we hope to hold discussions with over the coming weeks. The payments we have requested from those suppliers represent a gap payment for profits that were lost or costs that were incurred as a result of our commercial relationship with those particular suppliers.

That second sentence reminds me the Bad Example in a 'how to write clearly' guide.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:14 PM by Dorothy Rothschild

Jinx! Buy me a Coke!

Posted August 10, 2007 4:15 PM by Dorothy Rothschild

Apparently Rupert Murdoch is a typical Aussie businessman.........

Posted August 10, 2007 4:19 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Well, as an Aussie who'd been slowly losing interest in what A&R had to offer for some time now (mainly because they *really* don't give a fig for science fiction and fantasy as genres - for an idea of the contrast, the (fairly large) A&R near us in Canbrrra had about two and a half shelving blocks of SFF stuff, total, in their store. A much smaller bookshop (about 1/3 the size) in the same shopping centre managed to stock the same actual shelf space, which wound up as a larger percentage of actual books. Plus they had a wider variety of authors in that shelfspace than A&R did.

They've been steadily nailing their coffin shut from the inside for ages now, as far as I'm concerned. This was just the final nail going in. My principal objection is both as an Australian *and* as an Australian who writes, and who would rather appreciate being published one day (should I actually finish anything worthy of publication). The industry is already one of the more precarious ones - many of the small publishers barely survive from book to book as it is. This just sends a lot of them to the wall.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:27 PM by Meg Thornton

Fragano Ledgister at #29 writes:

> Apparently Rupert Murdoch is a typical Aussie businessman.........

Now now - I try not to judge you lot on your countrymen's worst excesses...

Posted August 10, 2007 4:28 PM by Steve Taylor

Another follow-up letter, but this one is from Chris Burgess, the general manager of Leading Edge Books (Australia's largest buying group of independent booksellers, with more than 180 members).

You know you have to read it when it contains bits like:

- All rebates are paid on a daily basis for ever and ever amen. You must ensure that the needle (provided) is inserted into your vein and a quart of your blood is received by us by the 7th of the month following the preceding month (which also follows the preceding month) . Any blood not received by this date will attract a daily 5% interest charge, payable in flesh.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:29 PM by Dori

Jinx! Buy me a Coke!

Is this regional? Where I grew up, the jinxed person can't speak until someone says their name.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:36 PM by julia

Firstly, I would like to assure you that the negotiations that are taking place between Angus & Robertson and our suppliers are not intended to have any impact on Australian authors and are purely about reaching a commercial arrangement with publishers...

Well, that's a relief. And here I thought that publishers were somehow part of the distribution channel that allowed authors to get their works into bookstores.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:50 PM by Adam Lipkin

We are trying to operate a successful bookstore chain and if we cannot strike a balance that allows us to maintain our retail operations, the impacts on the industry will be far greater if we are forced to close stores or drastically cut down titles.

It appears to me that the impact on the industry would be slight (and beneficial) if A&R were to close its retail stores. Somebody competent might buy them.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:53 PM by Seth Breidbart

That they probably contravene the Trade Practices Act, I shall leave to the ACCC to determine.

Here is the the ACCC, who describe themselves as 'Australian government organisation responsible for ensuring compliance with the Trade Practices Act 1974'. So I assume they are the relevant guys (I'm not myself an Australian, or even been there).

Hmmm, I wonder if there's a section in that Act about the practice of sending out invoices for goods or services nobody actually purchased, which tends to be rather illegal in lots of places.

...Ah found it here. Ayup, as I thought.

...

TRADE PRACTICES ACT 1974 - SECT 64 Assertion of right to payment for unsolicited goods or services or for making entry in directory

(1) A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, assert a right to payment from a person for unsolicited goods unless the corporation has reasonable cause to believe that there is a right to payment.

(2A) A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, assert a right to payment from a person for unsolicited services unless the corporation has reasonable cause to believe that there is a right to payment.

(3) A corporation shall not assert a right to payment from any person of a charge for the making in a directory of an entry relating to the person or to his or her profession, business, trade or occupation unless the corporation knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the person has authorized the making of the entry.

(4) A person is not liable to make any payment to a corporation, and is entitled to recover by action in a court of competent jurisdiction against a corporation any payment made by the person to the corporation, in full or part satisfaction of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory unless the person has authorized the making of the entry.

(5) For the purposes of this section, a corporation shall be taken to assert a right to a payment from a person for unsolicited goods or services, or of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory, if the corporation:

   (a) makes a demand for the payment or asserts a present or prospective right to the payment;

   (b) threatens to bring any legal proceedings with a view to obtaining the payment;

   (c) places or causes to be placed the name of the person on a list of defaulters or debtors, or threatens to do so, with a view to obtaining the payment;

   (d) invokes or causes to be invoked any other collection procedure, or threatens to do so, with a view to obtaining the payment; or

   (e) sends any invoice or other document stating the amount of the payment or setting out the price of the goods or services or the charge for the making of the entry and not stating as prominently (or more prominently) that no claim is made to the payment, or to payment of the price or charge, as the case may be.

...snipped section 6, as it's about directories rather than invoices, so is not relevant here...

(7) For the purposes of this section, an invoice or other document purporting to have been sent by or on behalf of a corporation shall be deemed to have been sent by that corporation unless the contrary is established.

...weirdly there is no section 8...

(9) In a proceeding against a corporation in respect of a contravention of this section:

   (a) in the case of a contravention constituted by asserting a right to payment from a person for unsolicited goods or unsolicited services--the burden lies on the corporation of proving that the corporation had reasonable cause to believe that there was a right to payment; or

   (b) in the case of a contravention constituted by asserting a right to payment from a person of a charge for the making of an entry in a directory--the burden lies on the corporation of proving that the corporation knew or had reasonable cause to believe that the person had authorised the making of the entry.

...

Quite possibly, all sorts interesting sections in that and other Laws that might also apply.

Posted August 10, 2007 4:55 PM by Skapusniak

Steve Taylor #31: I must point out that I'm a Pom....

Posted August 10, 2007 4:56 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Rakusin's reply is delightful, but his (successful) effort to do a complete demolition job on Rimmer made his reply very long.
I do wonder how much of it Rimmer read, and whether Rakusin's reply wouldn't have been more effective if he'd stopped after the fourth paragraph.

Posted August 10, 2007 5:03 PM by John Stanning

I would expect, given his CC list and the speed with which this hit the internet, that Mr. Rakusin was writing primarily for an audience that would give him rapt attention for as long as he cared to speak. Whether or not Rimmer read it, it was certainly effective.

Posted August 10, 2007 5:17 PM by Jeremy Preacher

Teresa is probably right about the bean counters. It happens in many businesses that bean counters wave the buzzword "80-20 rule" (or "Pareto principle", after the Italian economist who thought it up). They say "you're making 80% of your profits from 20% of your products". This is often the case, but it doesn't necessarily follow that you'll improve profitability by dropping the other 80% of your products, though lazy managements can often be fooled into doing so, with disastrous results if they haven't understood how their business works.
Delta Air Lines, for example, probably make most of their profits from the busiest 20% of routes; but it would make no sense to cut the other 80%, though apparently less profitable, if they feed passengers into the top routes. And so on.

Posted August 10, 2007 5:26 PM by John Stanning

I have been living out of Australia for just over 10 years, so saying I shall boycott A&R is probably daft :) but I shall avoid using them when I visit. Even before I left I rarely went to A&R to buy books unless I was after a particular "sale" item. I am more than happy to do business with Dymocks - especially as they are willing to post books to me in the UK (usually when it's an Aussie author who is, unfathomably, not published elsewhere).

Posted August 10, 2007 5:34 PM by Kayla

julia #33: That's how "jinx" worked where I grew up too, damnit. The rest of you are playing wrong!

Posted August 10, 2007 5:57 PM by Evan Goer

This whole thing is appalling. "Pay us a large sum or we'll take our marbles and go home" is what it sounds like to me, or maybe "our business is unprofitable, so we're going to try to rob you for it."

Dorothy 24: I've never been to Australia, but this makes me want to go just so I can not buy books from A&R.

My thoughts exactly.

Posted August 10, 2007 6:13 PM by Xopher

Dorothy 24: I've never been to Australia, but this makes me want to go just so I can not buy books from A&R.

I do plan to spend a couple of days in Australia early next year, but considering that letter I wonder if I will get a chance to boycott them. I will be disappointed if they crash and burn first and rob me of the chance to assist in their demise.

Posted August 10, 2007 6:18 PM by Claude Muncey

Jeremy Preacher wrote @39: I would expect . . . that Mr. Rakusin was writing primarily for an audience that would give him rapt attention for as long as he cared to speak. Whether or not Rimmer read it, it was certainly effective.

It's a woefully underappreciated principle of internet argument that the people you should be trying to convince are usually not the ones you're nominally arguing with.

Posted August 10, 2007 6:34 PM by colin roald

#25: "Inside he talked about how market analysis had shown that the three biggest selling categories in the book trade were sport, pets, and the third reich"

In the States, the canonical everyone-wants-it book is "Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog."

Posted August 10, 2007 6:50 PM by Stefan Jones

#25 & #46: I seem to recall Reuben Bolling once titled a Tom the Dancing Bug collection Everything I Need to Know I Learned from my Golf-Playing Cats.

Posted August 10, 2007 7:14 PM by Wesley

#20: I've just taken a look at that letter. I'm not a Republican, but if I were... well, I suspect that if I got a letter like that I wouldn't be for much longer.

The best response to

I am writing to find out where you stand. For example, we have no record of your support for President George W. Bush.

In fact, we have no record of your support for a Republican Presidential candidate going back to President Ronald W. Reagan!

would be "That's because in this country we have a secret ballot."

(Actually, on a whim I looked the phrase up on Google, and was surprised to read on Wikipedia that we didn't start using secret ballots until the 1880s.)

Posted August 10, 2007 7:34 PM by Wesley

One gets the impression that A&R is run by people whose only knowledge of retail book sales is from 1980s airports, and that represents the model they are striving for.

Posted August 10, 2007 7:43 PM by Jon Hendry

Until recently I was working in the IT dept. for a Very Large American Textbook Publisher as it struggled to convert its main databases to SAP, with the 'help' of a large number of contractors whose grasp of database construction was only equalled by their lack of comprehension of a publisher's material master needs. Instead of involving, say, many of the programmers who had been intimately involved in the complex catalog of texts and variants of texts, high management listened to the inexperienced consultants who firmly believed that the data could be retrofit into the "great for bricks" SAP data model.

Since I was an application developer for non-mainframe databases, I got to watch the Titanic s l o w l y crash into the iceberg without being able to do much about it, either. Eventually I was laid off when they decided they needed the budget to hire competent permanent SAP programmers to actually get it to run correctly, though to date it still isn't.

Oh -- anyway, point of story? Book publishing, top to bottom, side to side, is not just 'quirky' but is actually has its own strange rules of business for very good reasons that management dismisses at its peril.

Posted August 10, 2007 8:05 PM by Connie H.

Connie H @ 50... Instead of involving, say, many of the programmers who had been intimately involved in the complex catalog of texts and variants of texts, high management listened to the inexperienced consultants

Well, that sure brings back fond memories of my life as a full-time employee who's had to clean up after the mess of consultant programmers.

Posted August 10, 2007 8:11 PM by Serge

Stef, I thought it was "Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Nazi Dog Diet"

Posted August 10, 2007 8:13 PM by julia

Dave Bell (#7): Unfortunately, here in the US most supermarket chains charge wholesalers (and thus producers) "shelf fees" for access to their shelves. I don't know whether they charge such fees to sellers of produce, but it's well known that they make the sellers of packaged foods pay for being on their shelves.

So far as I know, though, this pernicious practice hasn't been adopted by other retailers.

Posted August 10, 2007 8:52 PM by Older

Yeah, a bookshop that only has bestsellers I think they commonly call 'supermarket' or 'K-Mart'. Not much need for A&R under that model.

Posted August 10, 2007 9:00 PM by Blue Tyson

Besides the hilarious apology for the 'tone' of the first letter - sorry to have interrupted the play, Mrs Lincoln - it's interesting that in A&R's latest weaselgram the main choice of spin is to say that they would never do anything to hurt Australian authors. Because who gives a toss about publishers, right?

Posted August 10, 2007 9:25 PM by Emil

As An Industry Insider in the Aust publishing scene, a few comments:
- ironically, A&R spent squillions installing SAP just a few years ago
- A&R has had - I think - 6 different corporate owners in the last 10 years or so, including the UK's WHSmith. Smith's gave up and sold out to private equity (Pacific Equity Partners).
- A&R shares ownership and 'management' with New Zealand's dominant book chain, Whitcoulls
- Borders' 24 stores in Aust & NZ are up for sale, and guess who is expected to buy them?
- once AR/W/Borders numbers over 200 stores, PEP plans to float the whole shebang on the stock market.
- as to the comments that the publishers don't need A&R, they do. A&R represents about 20% of a market that is barley profitable, esp. compared to other industries.
- however, I undertand that at least one of the *huge* publishing conglomerates (ironically, the one that used to share *ownership* with A&R, and whose MD also used to run A&R) has said it is prepared to walk away from A&R. If this happens, A&R are stuffed.

Posted August 10, 2007 9:36 PM by Scopo Philiac

Stef, I thought it was "Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Nazi Dog Diet"

Does the dog fight Communists in a submarine? If it does, I'll buy two copies.

Posted August 10, 2007 9:40 PM by mjfgates

Oh, and forgot to add:
- A&R's MD Mr Fe(n)lon comes from Tesco in the UK. He addressed this year's Australian Booksellers Association conference telling everyone to stop being so precious and that we should think of ourselves not as 'booksellers' and 'publishers', but as 'retailers' and 'suppliers'
- and the odious Rimmer hails from WHSmith and Borders UK, where he was 'reposnible for aligning their outcomes to responsible profit arrangements' or somesuch bollocks

Posted August 10, 2007 9:41 PM by Scopo Philiac

As I just wrote to them (after apologising to the poor sap who has to read and reply to all their letters of complaint), I see no point in threatening a boycott; if they cut out eclectic smaller publishers, and only stock the bestsellers, they will be in competition with places like Target and Kmart, who can offer cheaper prices on a wide range of comfort-reading. And I'll still hit specialist bookstores for my proper books anyhow.

I've only had limited experience documenting SAP, so perhaps someone else can tell me to what extent thinking of large and small publishers as interchangable "suppliers" is an artefact of having spent too long with SAP methodologies? It struck me that it was great for things like general supplies (I worked with it at a University), but I just can't see it working here.

Posted August 10, 2007 9:43 PM by Vian

There's a certain reasonableness-gone-haywire in corporate culture that this is a prime example of.

There's really two bits to that particular attitude, but they're related, IMO.

The one not shown here is "It's always possible to do more work with the same people, or the same amount of work with fewer people, by working smarter." Now, if you take out the word 'always', this is actually reasonable -- very often processes need a good overhaul and there's often some way to reduce the time it takes to do a given task, particularly in a business that's incorporated new technology recently. Eventually, of course, it gets silly -- I expect that should the people who believe that 'always' is the right word be put in charge of a construction project, they would end by having one guy with a hammer out there on the skyscraper construction site and wonder if there was a way to eliminate him, too.

The second, of course, is "There's always some way to reduce costs and therefore increase profit." I'd say this is the thinking that went into the original letter. Again, without the word 'always', this isn't such a bad thought, and when paired with the first part and someone who understands the notion of small changes and waiting for results, you can end up with a company that can handle more business with the same number of people, making more money. If the company is a good one, they may even pass some of that on to the workers*.

Of course, again, there's that 'always'... which leads to hare-brained ideas like this.

The return letter from Rakusin was a true work of art. The pair really ought to be printed and handed out to anyone with a upper-manager position in a corporation.

(*For a while, a place I used to work actually had the right combination of cost-cutting and process-improving -- and they were prone to giving twice-yearly bonuses to people just for sticking around, plus the odd performance bonus. Alas, they eventually started taking it further than I thought was reasonable, which seems to usually be the case.)

Posted August 10, 2007 9:48 PM by Tina

Brilliant post, Teresa. One small correction: Tower did not publish Carpentaria, which was published by an even smaller company, Giramondo; Tower distributes it. Incidentally, I would love to hear your and/or Patrick's take on that book. It's a book that makes an editor-reader's fingers twitch, long after accepting that its eccentric syntax, frequent tautology, occasional misspelling are integral to the narrative voice. (It is fantasy of sorts.)

With more relevance to the main subject: A&R was once an honourable name in Australian publishing and bookselling. Harper Collins Australia still have an A & R imprint, but personally I haven't darkened the doorway of an A&R bookshop for decades. Bibliophiles intending to visit Australia would be better off dropping in on Readings (Melbourne) or Gleebooks (Sydney) and the equivalents that surely exist in other cities.

Posted August 10, 2007 10:14 PM by Jonathan Shaw

Teresa et al: I am truly gobsmacked. I was planning on posting three lines about this. I had no idea that a minor brouhaha in this faraway and not-very-important country could engage your attention like this.

But A&R are doomed. After this, I don't expect them to be in business as a bookstore chain after next year. Their franchises may survive, perhaps rebranded. As noted above, the ACCC is taking an interest. I have no doubt that the lawyers are talking even now, and mentioning figures with dollar signs in front. Rimmer is about to be fitted with concrete pyjamas. It'll all end in tears.

Mind you, that doesn't mean we can't laugh now.

Posted August 10, 2007 11:13 PM by Dave Luckett

Teresa, you describe the letter as a blackmail request, but I think it's pretty clearly extortion, not blackmail. </pedantry>

Posted August 10, 2007 11:18 PM by Wim L

#20: I saw that letter and it took my breath away. I actually write letters like this as part of my job, and we would never do something half as brazen. What kills me is that this is clearly a prospecting appeal (i.e. a letter sent to people who haven't given before). The sternest we can muster is "I'm concerned that I haven't heard from you about renewing your membership" and that's to people who've already given money to us.

I also have to compare it to a similar appeal I got from the Democrats a couple years ago. The Democratic appeal claimed that I had been identified as a local leader and they wanted to survey me to help guide the future of the party. I'm sure that the survey was used for little more than helping them decide what issues they talked about when they hit me up in the future, but at least the Democrats made the pretense of trying to make me feel involved and wanted. The Republican appeal seems purely aimed at scaring people that they'll be kicked out of the party and become unable to vote if they don't send any money.

I'd be curious to see the return numbers on that letter. I'm guessing the return rate will be pretty good, but the average contribution will be low. After all, I always try to give a little more than the minimum asked for when I'm supporting a charity or a group who's work I care about, but I've never decided to chip in a few extra bucks on a registration fee or on any sort of club dues.

Posted August 10, 2007 11:25 PM by Chris W

Elsewhere and earlier, I've described myself as an "Olympic-standard Procrastinator". When I heard about this on the ABC TV news (1, 2), I immediately thought of this community, and that I should find a link and send it with a brief contextual note. (Potted A&R history, etc). Still haven't done that, and you're many hours and 60 comments in. *sigh*

Posted August 10, 2007 11:26 PM by Mez

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Posted August 11, 2007 12:01 AM by Dan Goodman

I just hope Rakusin autographed Rimmer's ass before he handed it to him

Not even with a BORROWED pen.

Posted August 11, 2007 12:10 AM by mythago

I don't own a business, but if I did, I think I'd send letters to my partners that said:

You owe me money because I don't like how much money I'm making if you don't send me money.

Seriously that's good business, I don't know why anybody hadn't thought of it before. Well, if you take the part about it being a letter out, then it is really comparable to heirarchical organized crime payments, isn't it? "Hey, Tony, Tony Senior says you owe a thousand more this month!" "Why, I paid the same every month." "Yeah, Tony Senior lost on some horses, so you owe him a thousand more." "*sigh*"

Posted August 11, 2007 12:44 AM by Scott

Yes, that letter from Rimmer is clearly an attempt at extortion. Well, why not? It worked for the US insurance industry in the 1980's. They lost a lot of money in bad investments (there was a housing bubble, just like the one that just popped), and they went to their customers and said, "You have to pay for our bad investments", and increased premiums accross the board.

The attitude of the mismanaging class that management is somehow not connected with the product or service a company offers really has to end this way, because they have no other way of increasing their profits. What you don't understand or respect you can't control, so they try to control what they can. And it all ends up with parts of dead horses in people's beds ...

Thank all the gods for people like Michael Rakusin, who aren't willing to take that kind of abuse, and tell the thugs where to get off.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:31 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who's been savaged by SAP. I spent 4 years at Nike building and maintaining web applications that were the tail on the SAP dog. In the ten years it took them to get SAP installed and customized* to the point where they could transfer the 100 or so engineers it took to do that, they spent more than $400,000,000** on that dog. And it still wouldn't hunt. Large parts of the organization exist as they do because that's the way SAP works, which sounds like a lousy return for all that money to me.

* "You just use right off the shelf. It's got everything you need." Yeah, right.

** I was going to write that figure in scientific notation, as I usually do, then I thought, no the zeroes make it look a lot more impressive.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:38 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Chris W @ #64, I'm grateful to TPM for getting a copy into electronic form for other people to see it. I was puzzling about whether to scan it or retype it.

The story at TPM is more worrisome than mine; one of Josh's readers' 83-y.o. father got it, worried about it and asked his son to look at it. Mine was addressed to me, and for whatever reason I actually opened the envelope rather than dropping it into the trash immediately and washing my hands thoroughly thereafter, which is my normal practice when receiving correspondence from the Republican party.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:45 AM by Linkmeister

Sisuile @ 5

I know that Australia had a large initial population of theives and criminals, but I didn't believe highway robbery was still in vogue.

Dear me - you seem to be terribly misinformed about Australia's colonial past. It's been accepted here for years that convicts transported here only committed victimless and romantic offenses, like Stealing a Loaf of Bread To Feed Their Starving Family, Making Off With A Bit Of Rope (*coff* without noticing there was a horse attached to it, honest *coff*) and Breathing While Irish.[1]

The catastrophically inept Charlie Rimmer and his tragically comic boss Mr Fenlon are both scions of the Evil UKnian Powers who transported so many innocents, and who are clearly still intent on opressing good honest folk.

[1]OK, also occasionally Highway Robbery. But only to Feed Their Starving Family/Give To The Poor In A Dick Turpiny, Robin Hoody Fasion.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:49 AM by Vian

Bruce Cohen @ 70... "You just use right off the shelf. It's got everything you need."

When 'they' tell me that the merger of two systems will be totally transparent, I grab the bottle of extra-strength Windex.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:52 AM by Serge

Linkmeister: I always open those.

Then I send the forms back. For some reason I seem to forget to fill them out first.

If I could still tape them to a brick, I would.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:55 AM by Terry Karney

#20 et seq.: What's interesting about that lettter is that the Big Divisive Issue of the last election (gay marriage) is nowhere to be found. Does this mean it's being intentionally deëmphasized for the next round, or are they just focusing on issues that people tend to care about even without coaching?

#60: That reminds me of an old joke among programmers. It's been observed that any nontrivial program can be written more compactly, shortening it at least by one instruction. And it's well-known that any nontrivial program has at least one undiscovered bug in it. Applying induction, we can see that any program can, with enough effort, be optimized down to a single instruction ... which will be incorrect.

Posted August 11, 2007 2:37 AM by Wim L

Tina @ 60

The way the original phrases (the ones containing "always") are usually used is by that high-tech management technique of Increasing Productivity. The dirty little secret is that productivity as defined by managers is just dollars of profit divided by hours of work*. So you either want to increase dollars of revenue, decrease dollars of overhead, or increase hours, in each case without changing the other two. The simplest way to do this is to either pay the employees less or work them harder, usually by getting rid of some of them and making the remaining ones do all their own work and that of the ones you dumped. That in a nutshell is what a corporate turn-around specialist (also called a "strip and flip") does.

* I know, this is a terribly naive way to describe it. Exactly my point.

Posted August 11, 2007 3:24 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

"Mafia" really is the word. These arrogant pizzles are attempting to extort "insurance premiums" from their vendors. That's gotta be illegal somewhere.

(Having caught up with the thread since typing that para, I see y'all have confirmed that, in fact, they are and it is. Well done.)

As regards the volubly hilarious follow-up, I can only say to Mr. Rimmer, "I, too, am a customer, and there is no law against my choosing not to do business with a particular vendor... but I never dreamt of demanding $25/wk from King Soopers to guarantee my return business! How brash! Do you think that might work for me, too, or do you reckon my having a conscience instead of big brass balls might get in the way?"

Daniel @6: Wheee! In the thread early. Do I really get to be the first person to say it?

Well, with 75 comments already on the docket, I knew better than to hope it could be me. First thought that crossed my mind, though.

(I will admit to running to the bookshelf to double-check with Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers that the hologram's first name wasn't, in fact, Charles. Of course it wasn't. I knew that.)

OP: When you’re sending a formal blackmail request, you should always use the recipient’s full name.

Teresa, you are totally going to dominate my random quote generator if you keep making me *snrkle* my tea like this.

When 'they' tell me that the merger of two systems will be totally transparent, I grab the bottle of extra-strength Windex.

...although you might get some competition from Serge.

Posted August 11, 2007 4:11 AM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Oh, please, please, please, if A&R as a retail concern crashes and burns, can I have a Dymocks? Even a little one? I miss them from my time in Sydney. There's only A&R here (major regional centre north of Sydney), really, and those few stores are very much as Julia Jones described the chain in general (*waves to fellow Lyst person Julia*).

Jonathan Shaw (#61), I'm fond of Abbey's (and its sister science fiction and fantasy store, Galaxy). Gleebooks is very good, but inconvenient if you just want to duck into the city and out again. But all of those book shops are my main regret about not living in Sydney anymore. It's a 2 and a half train trip to visit them now *sniff*

*goes back to lurking*

Posted August 11, 2007 4:12 AM by Jo MacQueen

Linkmeister @20: The thing that really boggled me about that letter from the Republican party was the bit about "Oh noes! Hillary might can has Presidency--and be sockpuppet for B1LLZORZ!!!!1!!!!"

Aren't these the same people who came up with the "Impeach Clinton / And Her Husband Too" bumper stickers? If they believed Hillary was the power behind Bill's throne, why would they now believe that Hillary, having attained a throne of her own, would cede the power behind it to Bill? Or do they simply expect the pair to take turns? How very... progressive of the Republican party to consider that possibility!

Posted August 11, 2007 4:18 AM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Here's an example of how logical thinking about a problem gets shattered by the assumptions, just as some of the MBA shibboleths do.

(1) For safe highway use, vehicle spacing should be based on the stopping distance, which is proportional to the square of the speed.

(2) Halving traffic speed quarters the safe interval. So a mile of read carries four times as many vehicles, which take twice as long to pass any arbitrary point.

(3) So speed tends towards zero, road capacity tends to infinity.

What's the error, the missed reality? It's assumed that vehicles have zero length.

You can cut the empty space, or the wasted time, but you can't cut out the vehicle.

And some wasted time is there because, if something goes wrong, you'll need that time. Even something as simple as sometimes getting a red light at a junction.

Posted August 11, 2007 4:22 AM by Dave Bell

Julia @33 - re: Jinx, I'm quoting an old SNL sketch with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mary Gross; this and many other details can, of course, be found in the Wikipedia entry.

(Which reminds me of the time I watched 'The Sixth Sense' in Bucharest, and was the only person in the theater who laughed at the 'it was much better than Cats' line. SNL, how you have warped me.)

Posted August 11, 2007 5:31 AM by Dorothy Rothschild

If Michael Rakusin was a woman I'd ask him to marry me. What a shower of s***s, really - but what a nitrate-burning, fuel-injected V8 of a response! Go fella!

Posted August 11, 2007 9:09 AM by Paul Bowen

Fragano Ledgister at #37 writes:I know better

> Steve Taylor #31: I must point out that I'm a Pom....

Oops. I plead guilty to assuming that everyone on the net is a white male American in his mid 30s who works in IT. Even though I know better. I was writing at around 5 or 6 am in the grip of mind altering insomnia.

Though I guess "I try not to judge you lot on your countrymen's worst excesses..." could reasonably be said to anyone from any country :)

Posted August 11, 2007 9:26 AM by Steve Taylor

When 'they' tell me that the merger of two systems will be totally transparent, I grab the bottle of extra-strength Windex.

Serge, what good is it to drink Windex(R)[1]? When fed a line like that, I prefer to wash it down with single malt scotch.

[1]Windex is a registered trademark and blah blah blah. Writers and publishers are made too aware of this fact on a far too frequent basis.

Posted August 11, 2007 10:16 AM by David

re: #30 ::: Meg Thornton ::: (view all by) ::: August 10, 2007, 04:27 PM:

"They've been steadily nailing their coffin shut from the inside for ages now"

Dang, but that was a beautiful turn of phrase

Posted August 11, 2007 10:41 AM by mmy

David @ 84... True, I could have said 'glass-surface cleaner', but 'Windex' sound much snappier. And pretty tasty when mixed in with Sterno. (Now I have this image of us programmers looking like Andromeda Strain's town drunk who survived because he loved drinking Sterno. Not an inaccurate description when you've worked long nights on a Transparent Project from Hell.)

Posted August 11, 2007 10:54 AM by Serge

#47: There's a book by Colin McEnroe titled "Lose Weight Through Great Sex with Celebrities (the Elvis Way)"

Posted August 11, 2007 11:12 AM by Ledasmom

We had to wear the cost of sub-economic ordering from you through [...] SAP installation [...].

Every single organization I've ever been part of that got involved with SAP spent years throwing money out the window in return for absolutely no benefit over when they started. I don't know what the S and the A stand for, but the P is obviously Ponzi.

Posted August 11, 2007 11:30 AM by Anticorium

Steve Taylor #83: I am, in fact, a biracial male Brit in his 50s....

Posted August 11, 2007 11:45 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Wow. I'm sending this link to the American Booksellers Association, for other independent booksellers' edification. I wonder if Tower sells to or has a distributor in the US.

I particularly like the phrase "core incompetencies".

Posted August 11, 2007 11:52 AM by Ann Burlingham

mmy @ 85 - Thanks! I suppose it almost makes up for the rather convoluted paragraph which came before it (where I changed subject midway through). Note to self: if functioning on less than 8 hours sleep and less than 3 cups of tea, check for *coherence* as well as spelling, etc.

Posted August 11, 2007 12:17 PM by Meg Thornton

If Charlie Rimmer ever decides to make a career change, he appears to have all qualities required of an executive in the music recording industry.

Posted August 11, 2007 12:20 PM by Rob Hansen

Wouldn’t life be interesting if we could just tell our trading partners that we’ve decided to raise our “minimum threshold of profitability” on past transactions, and they owe us?

Dear employer,

I am writing to you because our economic relationship falls into the category of unacceptable profitability.

As a consequence I would invite you to pay the attached invoice by Aug 17th 2007. The payment represents the gap for our relationship, and moves it from an unacceptable level of profitability, to above my minimum threshold.

Posted August 11, 2007 1:00 PM by Elusis

Mr. Rakusin's reply is lovely, but he must surely know that the entity that generated the letter to which he is responding is constitutionally unable to understand his reasoning, let alone alter its behavior. The actual audience is elsewhere (even here, for example).

What caught my eye at once was the fact that A&R is currently owned and operated by a private equity outfit, which to my limited understanding of the current biz environment means 1) Finance Rulz, 2) Everything Is Abstract and Nothing Is Particular, and 3) Gut It and Cut Out. I keep getting flashbacks to the leveraged-buyout days and marvel at how the financial world keeps inventing the same pathological pillaging schemes, and the putative grownups in charge of the universe keep letting them get away with it. (Yeah, I know--grownups are a myth and we're all at the mercy of the playground bullies. I considered stopping even carrying any lunch money, but they'd just take my sneakers instead.)

Posted August 11, 2007 1:01 PM by Russell Letson

Wim L (#75): Applying induction, we can see that any program can, with enough effort, be optimized down to a single instruction ... which will be incorrect.

See this RISKS Digest article about IEFBR14 (John Pershing's post), which, I must explain for the benefit of those readers who have not had the joy of dealing with IBM mainframes, is the null program.

Yes. The null program. It does nothing. It intentionally does nothing[1]. Originally, it was just one instruction, "return to caller". Unfortunately, that meant it had a bug; it didn't set the return code to show successful completion. Further discussion is also online.

[1] This is important for doing data definitions in JCL. I'm very sad that I still know and understand all this.

Steve Taylor (#83): As the preceding might suggest, I fit a number of the criteria in your assumptions. (That number being 100%, in fact.)

Posted August 11, 2007 2:03 PM by Christopher Davis

[aside]Core incompetancies is a phrase which describes so much of modern life, especially online, especially, this last fortnight, LJ.

I suspect that, from a psychoanalytic point of view, it could also be described as a corporate deathwish.[/aside]

Posted August 11, 2007 2:11 PM by JESR

Avoid this mess. Get thee to a library.

Posted August 11, 2007 2:12 PM by Amy

Christopher Davis @ 95... This is important for doing data definitions in JCL. I'm very sad that I still know and understand all this.

Makes you feel like a dinosaur, eh? I managed to make the transition (which I guess means I'm now a bird), but I still get to dabble in the world of mainframe programming (which makes me more like a chicken than an eagle?)

Posted August 11, 2007 2:19 PM by Serge

Adding a SAP story ... my company uses it for things like expense accounts. Everyone who has to use it hates it, particularly because the other end of the fax machine/e-mail/phone call seems to be very ... iffy. (I hear stories of people faxing receipts, getting a confirmation that it went through to the other machine, and having to do it again (possibly more than once) because the people on the other end say they didn't get it.)

Posted August 11, 2007 3:02 PM by P J Evans

... In that case, the beancounters reply, would it not make more sense to only publish the bestsellers?

I look forward to some publisher eventually sending their accountants to Las Vegas or Atlantic City for a day, with firm instructions that they are to place money only on the bets which win!

Posted August 11, 2007 3:28 PM by Clifton Royston

Congratulations! You've been BoingBoinged:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/11/understanding_austra.html

Note: www.boingboing.net is a very popular and influential blog in America. Expect a traffic bump.

Posted August 11, 2007 4:46 PM by PeaceLove

If only managerial Fordism had had the same effects on the personal level that the original version had, we wouldn't get messes like this.

We'd get a whole different kind of rule-based screwup by numbers instead, I'm sure.

Posted August 11, 2007 6:03 PM by Sam Kelly

PeaceLove 101: I suspect you may have come here from BoingBoing, since that's your first post here...I think we can be confident, however, that our Hostess knows who BoingBoing is.

Still, thanks for the courtesy. And welcome.

Posted August 11, 2007 6:09 PM by Xopher

Why doesn't A&R just give it up and sell only the ultimate English-language bestseller: the Bible?

Because most of its target audience already has a copy.

Posted August 11, 2007 6:40 PM by Kathryn Cramer

Anticorium @ 88

It's not an acronym or an abbreviation, it's a word. Just read it aloud and you'll understand how much respect some software vendors have for their customers.

Posted August 11, 2007 9:15 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Good God. That Republican letter -- I clicked the link in Particles before I read this thread, and thought the punchline had to be that it was a scam. It sounds like all the spam email I get urging me to verify my bank account password. It makes me selfishly wish that mail fraud wasn't such a risky proposition.

Chris W. @ 64: I bet the wording will actually work -- these are, after all, the people suckling at the poisoned teat of Fox News; if the message is "OMG!scare!OMG!notconservativeenough!" they'll automatically assume it's true.

That type of tactic always reminds me of this track.

Clifton Royston @ 100: I believe I've seen a memo from a Hollywood executive, somewhere, containing exactly that instruction.

Posted August 11, 2007 9:34 PM by A.J. Luxton

Thanks for posting this, TNH. Of course, the thing that's really troubling us local writers is that most emerging authors are published by the smaller houses. That a lot of newer writers' work may vanish from Australia's largest bookstore chain as a result of this is worrying. Doubly so if PEP manages to buy Borders as well - although their stocking agenda with those stores will probably be different. We have a wonderful reading/writing ecology here in OZ, and Angus and Robertson looks set to become a SUV driving through the middle of it.

Also worth underlining that a lot of A&R stores are owned by Franchisees, who are free to continue business relationships with 'unprofitable' distributors. That the public won't be able to tell what stores are franchises and what stores are owned by PEP will surely hurt them too. I'd be feeling quite angry with head office right now if I was one of their franchisees.

A&R, as part of PEP's plan is also rolling out a large on-line retail strategy. We don't have a local version of Amazon (in OZ, if we buy on Amazon, we're either paying for shipping from the states or the UK) and their strategy is to try and snare the local (and SE Asian) online English book market. This, combined with their play for Borders at the moment, means that their stocking decisions have much greater impact than just the 20% of the retail market they currently hold.

Posted August 11, 2007 9:52 PM by Craig Bolland

Craig @ 107: if you're right about their online retail ambitions, this news is even more pathetic/hilarious. We've all heard the stories about how Amazon's success is driven by the long tail, and here are A&R trying to *limit* their range? The mind boggles.

(It's also amusing that they haven't offered any of the things that make Amazon interesting, like big discounts or free domestic postage. Half the time it's still cheaper to order internationally and swallow the shipping than to buy online locally.)

Posted August 11, 2007 11:16 PM by ndg

Thank-you Theresa for your surgical analysis of that most vile letter, when I first read it in SMH I thought about sending it to you but wasn't sure if it was appropriate. I'm so glad that some else did. What Michael Rakusin has to say about the declining state of A&R bookstores is correct. For years I have watched their declining stock and wondered what was going on and thanks to his response I now know. There are a small number of excellent independent bookstores remaining here in Brisbane, all obviously run by people who understand the industry and the products they sell, none of them belong to A&R.

Posted August 11, 2007 11:39 PM by miadstragedy

One thing we can be assured of (even though we will never get to enjoy it) is the public humiliation that will be heaped on A&R management and especially Mr. Rimmer by many of their casual and close acquaintances. Even those people who will apparently sympathize with them will be secretly chortling, and they (A&R, Rimmer) will know it.

Most especially will be the underlings who already despise them and hate working for them, who will almost imperceptibly smirk when passing them in the halls and in the car parks. They will be eating this dish cold for a very long time.

Posted August 12, 2007 1:17 AM by dano

Kathryn @ 104: Ah, but they need to have more than one copy -- gotta have several in different colors to go with all your oufits. No, really.

Posted August 12, 2007 2:13 AM by Janet Lafler

Janet at 111: I started to chortle, and then realized that, OMG, I own more than one Bible.

Let's see. There's the KJV that was given to my maternal grandfather over 70 years ago when he was first named as a sitting state judge, it has his name stamped in it, it was published by Oxford University Press; there's the Viking Studio edition of the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible designed and illustrated by Barry Moser, and anyone who has never seen those incredible illustrations is missing something; there's Eugene Peterson's eccentric and delightful contemporary language translation of The New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs, titled The Message; there's another KJV, "arranged for family reading" by Ruth Hornblower Greenough, with illustrations from designs by William Blake, yes, that William Blake... I can't imagine not having any one of them.

Posted August 12, 2007 2:49 AM by Lizzy L

Sally and I have half a dozen between us. A KJV each, both presentation copies; A Revised Standard plus concordance, which I use when I want to find out what is, in the opinion of the best available scholarship, the most accurate translation of a particular passage (and to learn what variant readings are arguable and about the arguments themselves); a New English; my father's interlinear translation (and very literal) Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament; A Good News, which I read to find out how far it is possible to dumb down the language if you don't care what it sounds like. Oh, and I have joint ownership of the family's massive bible in Welsh, in which we still record births, deaths and marriages, using for this purpose extra pages bound in when we had it (poorly) rebound a couple of decades back (sorry, abi), and which, to my shame and sorrow, I can't read at all. It belonged to my great-grandparents.

Posted August 12, 2007 3:28 AM by Dave Luckett

Bruce #105 : just to show my nerd status, back in the '70s the founders called their company SAP for Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung, roughly "System Analysis and Program development", though nowadays they say "Systems and Application Products".

The SAP company is worldwide and has sold a lot of product, so they must be doing something right. But any computer system can be implemented badly, as we see far too often. The golden rule of SAP seems to be that if you need to spend millions customising it, you're using the wrong product; but if native SAP suits your way of working, it'll do you a good job.

Posted August 12, 2007 3:53 AM by John Stanning

Wow! That someone goes so far to demand even money from publishers is truly a scandal. What's next? Publishers charging authors for unsold copies?

Michael Rakusin writes: "Multiple suppliers—that is, a broad range of publishers and books to choose from—is a good thing, if a bookstore chain knows what it’s doing."

... and this is an important point here: They often do NOT know what they are doing. Their buyer might be a 20+something-year-old chick, buying books for thousands of stores all around the country. What does he/she know about the desideratum of any local community? He/she relies (... if at all) on sales mumbers her computer spits out ... of already sold books.

What can this method possibly tell him/her about NEW publications?

As Marshall McLuha