Five years ago Brooks was a seemingly unremarkable country singer ignored by the music intelligentsia. Then he shot to the top of the charts almost overnight. The country charts? No, the everything charts. To the shock of all but Wal-Mart shoppers everywhere, he was selling more records than anybody else by far. The ““Garth Brooks factor’’ was only one of many changes in the record industry wrought by a company called SoundScan, which provided comprehensive sales data for companies that for years had been winging it or relying on dodgy phone surveys. By assembling point-of-sale information from bar codes, SoundScan let companies know exactly what was selling, in what region, at what kind of store. ““They completely revolutionized our business,’’ says Lou Mann, senior vice president of Capitol Records.
Now SoundScan is trying to export the revolution to the book business with BookScan. Never mind that it could transform the best-seller lists: the results could be even more dramatic. The ever-struggling publishing industry has been pummeled by pricey authors, bossy chains, books released with great fanfare and vanishing without a trace–until the stores start sending them back to be shredded. BookScan argues that publishers could operate more efficiently if they had better sales data. More and more bookstores use computers to track their sales these days, of course. BookScan is merely the first serious player to offer to assemble the far-flung data for publishers–at a price.
Some publishers are balking at BookScan because of the money, poor-mouthing it in hopes of a better deal. But their resistance goes beyond that. Random House and Simon & Schuster haven’t signed up yet–there’s not much incentive to start paying for data if the big stores aren’t providing information. And even though SoundScan has good relations with the mass-market retailers who also sell records, the two dominant chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders/Waldenbooks, haven’t committed. A spokesperson for the latter told NEWSWEEK, ““We are not going to be participating.’’ The service’s start date has already been delayed from last month.
SoundScan says it’s unperturbed–the music people were a tough sell, too. The wallflowers will have to dance when enough of their competitors are on the floor. And although they stress that changing the ““charts’’ isn’t the primary purpose of BookScan–which is to help publishers manage inventory and improve marketing–if they can align themselves with a major best-seller list it would be a big leg up. A key breakthrough for SoundScan came when it took over the Billboard chart. Suddenly, the Top 200 began reflecting which records were really selling around the country, not what certain store clerks were reporting over the telephone. These clerks, it seemed, were subject to manipulation by the record companies. Which is to say they were often seen walking around in brand-new suede tour jackets. ““You could buy chart positions–it was easy to do and we all did it, and we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it,’’ says Capitol’s Mann. He adds that besides saving the industry money on that now obsolete practice, SoundScan has helped him sharply cut his rate of unsold records and improved his marketing efficiency.
But Garth Brooks is what people remember–and some book people fear that the best-seller lists will be overrun by O.J. books and self-help tomes. Right now The New York Times best-seller list, though not seen as scientific, is considered a last line of defense –and a commercial powerhouse. It drives the business with a simple cycle: once a book hits the list, the giant chains discount it by as much as 30 percent. And sell more.
The Times won’t reveal much about its secret recipe except to say it tracks sales at 4,000 bookstores plus wholesalers serving 50,000 other retailers, but many think the list favors independent bookstores and the ““literary’’ books that sell there. And many book executives still derive visceral pleasure from a success like ““Cold Mountain.’’ The Times may be seen as inaccurate, but comfortingly so. ““I think it’s a healthy thing,’’ says the president of a major imprint. ““These books do sell in the end.’’ Book-Scan has been in discussions with the Times about joining forces. Even so, the fears that worthy books will never be heard from again are exaggerated. Small books could actually benefit because publishers would be able to manage them better, spot a slow-building title selling in certain types of stores, then target those stores. And the fact is, change is coming to publishing no matter what. Says one executive: ““Even if it’s not BookScan, it’s going to be someone else.''
