Under the Cover by Childress Clayton;

Author:Childress, Clayton; [Childress, Clayton;]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780691160382
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

FROM FIELD REPS TO BOOK SELLERS

Although by 2015 eBooks accounted for about 30 percent of all book sales, for the vast majority of authors and publishers making it into a wide variety of brick-and-mortar bookstores is still a book’s best chance at a broad readership. Field reps, the people responsible for getting books into retailers, inhabit one of the two reception-facing wings of production (the other being publicity staff). They are the honeybees of the field as they travel from bookstore to bookstore trying to pollinate seeds of enthusiasm for the books they represent. As one of two pathways through which the boundaries between production and reception are mediated, the relationship between field reps and buyers at retail outlets (who pick which books will be stocked) is akin to the relationship between agents and editors who mediate the boundaries between creation and production. For that reason, once again, these field-transitioning players navigate the interconnected problems of oversupply and fundamental uncertainty in a familiar way: they rely on interpersonal relationships and trust, webs of collective belief, and received wisdom and “horse sense” about how the field at the receiving end of the transition might in fact receive things. Because no bookstore buyer will ever be able to read and evaluate all of the books she stocks, the signals sent through publishers’ catalogs and in conversations with field reps are of the utmost importance.

When opening a publisher’s catalog, a buyer can be sure that even if she is not able to read each book, those at the front with double-page spreads have won out in the season’s battle for collective enthusiasm at the publisher.3 She may not know why or what it means for her particular bookstore (e.g., the “type” of store she’s selling in and the readers it attracts), but that is why a field rep is there to guide her through the catalog. Nonetheless, the catalog alone can be a powerful, sometimes too powerful, signal. As explained by a field rep, with a bit of exasperation, “I have accounts stop at a book because it has a double-page spread [in the catalog], and even for books that they probably should not carry at all, they’ll take copies of it because of the double-page spread.” For this field rep, to see the buyer rely solely on the catalog is a personal affront. What is more regularly a relational exchange of mutual dependence and consideration now reduces the field rep to a courier.

A different field rep explains the reverse scenario, in which the catalog itself is reduced to an afterthought due to the primacy and mutual dependence of the relational exchange between parties: “I have accounts that, over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other well enough that, I know what they want and I can help point them. Like Jerry at Yellowtail Books, when I visit him he doesn’t even open the catalog. He just leaves it closed on his lap and we sit down and we talk about books.” These stories are worth sharing because they are, in opposite directions, exceptions to the rule.

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