Baker & Taylor is a corporation that specializes in selling books and other material to libraries. Apparently, they are the major source that libraries buy from.
Which is why libraries have a problem. Because Baker & Tylor announced yesterday that they are closing down. The official last day will be in January but they’ve already begun shutting down.
Libraries all over the country are scrambling to find alternative sources for their material.
Believe me, I know. That’s our library’s distributor. We had books backordered for months, getting canceled because they’d been on back order for so long…and then this news. Our director was in a bit of a dilemma because Ingram, one of the other big distributors, doesn’t give paper invoices (which our bookkeeper would need) and Brodart, another one, never got back to her (word is, they’re limiting new customers because they’re so swamped with them after the B & T debacle). We’ve ended up going with Midwest, another distributor that used to specialize mainly in academic libraries but has expanded into public ones. So hopefully, we should start getting those books in soon.
I just feel awful for the B & T workers. I’ve been reading some of their comments on the r/libraries subreddit. No severance, no nothing.
The closure follows a failed acquisition by publisher and distributor ReaderLink Distribution Services, which had signed a letter of intent September 6 to acquire B&T’s assets and continue its operations. The purchase, scheduled to close on September 26, fell apart that day.
According to Publishers Weekly, B&T CEO and owner Aman Kochar told employees in a meeting on Monday that without a buyer and with ongoing pressure from its primary creditor, B&T was forced to wind down its business and begin layoffs.
I can’t imagine this was much of a surprise, and frankly from what I’ve seen libraries are purging their stacks (which has been a boon for people who want cheap, often hard to find and out of print books) but it is still a big disruption for libraries.
Stranger
Really dumb question: Is there a reason libraries don’t just buy books retail (Amazon, BN, etc.)? Do they get a special deal through the library specific distributors?
And often the books come labeled and with MARC records from those distributors as well.
Libraries get books from places that are set up to sell books in large volumes, while normal retail establishments aren’t. It’s not that they can’t get them from a normal book retailer, it’s just very disadvantageous to do so.
Curious, what does this mean exactly? Like they get a digital file for the books they ordered, or is there a sticker on the books, or are the books a different edition & ISBN than a retail copy?
Distributors can do bulk purchases similar to booksellers to get the wholesale price, and as noted in the article Baker & Taylor would also prepare the books to be ready-to-shelve in libraries with dust jacket, bar code, et cetera, freeing librarians from having to do these things while processing incoming books.
Stranger
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!
The books themselves aren’t different, but depending on the distributor they will provide electronic records to the library’s system as part of the record and might put physical labels on them. It just saves the library a lot of work.
Follett, for example, is the largest distributor of school library books from pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade, and will do the whole deal; labeling them physically and everything.
Those are the catalog records. Books come shelf ready; usually it’s just a couple of clicks to download the records into the library catalog. The books also come already labeled. It doesn’t really take that long to link a new book to a record, but if you receive a few hundred books it would take a while. If you’re working in a school Library without an aide, that’s time you don’t have. I would say that Baker and Taylor going under is due to the time they sent a shipment of books to the wrong school and I never got them. They never owned up to their mistake. K-Mart also went out of business due to my 1984 firing.
Wow - you are not the man to be messing with.
Given the general demise in print books as a result of e-books, pressures to cut costs in your increasingly stressed economy and also a threatening and uncertain environment from your anti-educationalists and fanatical book-burners, I expect that libraries were curtailing orders quite drastically and it eventually got too much.
Libraries have always been one of my happy and safe places, and although they don’t get recognised, book wholesalers are part of the intricate ecology of such places that keeps them alive. Hopefully the rest of the market can become a bit more resilient with one less player and not suffer anything similar, or even take on displaced staff.
Yeah, I would think orders from libraries are sharply declining in recent years. Anecdotally, a few years ago my local library did a major upgrade, tearing down the existing one-story building and erecting a much larger two-story building in its place. The old building was jammed to the rafters with shelves of books and had no room for new books. I had assumed that’s why they replaced it. But when it opened, I discovered that the new building contains computers, 3D printers, etc., along with maybe 5% as many books as in the old building. I take that as a sign of things to come; I expect libraries to soon be primarily places for public Internet access, with books being a minor or nonexistent side offering. I used to visit the old library practically weekly, but my one and only visit to the new one made me very sad.
Same here. Our new one is apparently more coworking space and cafe than book loaning service. It was a divisive decision, apparently.
I’m not sure that’s the case. E-books come from the same vendors, and are in most cases one at a time check outs. Books with unlimited checkouts cost a lot more. From my observation the children’s/teen market is being saved by the huge popularity of graphic novels. Where I live (DC area) libraries are still drawing big crowds. As far as the effect of the book burners goes, there is no better way to make books go out more than trying to ban them. Even if a given library doesn’t order certain books due to their controversial nature it doesn’t necessarily follow that their total budget is decreased. Of course I’m speaking as someone whose career has almost all been in blue area of blue states (Brooklyn and DC),
The story Stanger linked to didn’t mention this, but Amazon has quietly launched a library distribution program. With their current distribution strength they could easily take over the market. Some librarians aren’t happy about this because Amazon is Amazon. But it’s the only force that could immediately scale up to replace a behemoth like B&T.
Although that article does talk about the decrease in library usage during Covid, my understanding is that the recent pressures on spending for the majority are driving people back to libraries as a free resource. And both federal and state funding for libraries have been dwindling for years. Higher usage is facing lesser availability. This is a crisis.
Are they still circulating ebooks, though? They come from the same vendors and in my experience cost around the same.
Did you mean to reply to me? I didn’t mean that the library doesn’t loan books (paper or digital) anymore, just that the new space is mostly dedicated to things other than bookshelves. If you need a title and they don’t have it shelved, presumably you’d have to request it via interlibrary loan instead.
Oops, I replied to the wrong post. Sorry about that!
Libraries purging stacks has been going on for a long time, but it’s more noticeable when they’re being replaced by ebooks. I don’t think they are getting rid of books that are still circulating or in decent condition. Many times in my career I heard people muttering “unbelieveable” when their “favorite” was removed from the collection because it hadn’t circulated in years. Many of us are less sentimental about books than you might think.
None of my posts on the topic were intended to minimize the impact of a major book jobber disappearing on libraries, especially public libraries. I think other companies will eventually take up the slack, but that will take time. Keep in mind that in many municipalities libraries are required by law to put out bids before selecting vendors. That could result in a real mess if mayors/councils don’t show some flexibility. Please be patient with your local libraries if it takes a while for them to acquire that new book you’ve been waiting for.