Making a Book Step Six: Distribution – from book warehouse to bookseller

The Read’s sixth in a series suggested by a bookseller, who told Booksellers New Zealand: “I'd like to see a series of articles about how a book is made.”

The book is written, edited, laid out, promoted and printed. What next?

All international titles distributed by New Zealand publishers are printed overseas, and many local titles are printed in Asia. Pallet loads and container loads are then shipped to individual publishers’ warehouses and distribution points in Australia and New Zealand.

IMAGE: boxes of books sitting in the Random House warehouse

For cost reasons, air freight of bulk stock is used only for emergencies such as a schedule overrun for a book that must still be released on a certain day.

Like other areas in the production process, distribution knows the expected date of a title arriving from its inception, and keeps up with any changes in the schedule. So it is in the plan and no surprise when 5,000 copies of the latest thriller arrive, but there’s concern and alternative plan-making if the turnaround is tighter than anticipated.

Most warehouses send new releases out once or twice monthly and stock reorders are handled separately.

The whole process starts with those wonderful customer service teams, the booksellers’ best friends. Whether the order is electronic, by phone or placed by the reps, they have to enter it in the system accurately to ensure the next steps work perfectly. A surprising number of orders are still placed by phone or fax.

At Random House NZ, Distribution Manager Jill Ewing says the invoices are processed overnight so orders are ready to be picked when work starts the following morning.

Publishers’ premises are a bit like icebergs – offices are about one tenth of the building, the warehouse takes the most space.

IMAGE: the enormous Random House warehouse

If you haven’t been in one, imagine a space the size of two rugby fields, open to the roof with no ceiling – somewhere quite a bit larger than your average big Mitre 10 or Placemakers. The retail analogy ends there, as the lighting is purely functional, as is the acres of basic steel frame shelving and the concrete floor.

There is a separate area for bulk stock left in the shrink wrap it arrives in, and areas for picking and packing.

IMAGE: The huge book warehouse.

Encountering a book warehouse for the first time, you would be amazed the system works: so many books in so many places!

Different imprints may have separate storage areas, but within the storage areas it is not all neat and ordered like a horizontal library. It may have been done that way many years ago, but since the advent of computers when invoices are printed, the copy for the warehouse team contains information on where the book is sited... and the invoices are arranged in a logical picking order from the far end of the warehouse to ending near the packers.

Computers also give warehouse personnel the information of what stock needs to be drawn from bulk storage to fill the day’s orders.

When the transfers are made, the information must then be meticulously entered in the computer system of course.

IMAGE: Picking means the warehouse person having a tiered cart on shopping trolley principles and the warehouse person going to all the title locations and putting the orders into the cart.

Carton quantities are printed on all boxes, so if 25 is needed of a title with 18 in a box, it is a box plus seven copies. You have to be fit and reasonably strong to be a picker – many kilometres are day are walked on a hard surface, and warehouses have neither heating nor air conditioning!

At Random, specialist packers take over each order. There’s an art to judging how many cartons an order will take and how the packing is done, with heaviest books at the bottom. Here a conveyor belt saves a lot of lifting.

Depending on the courier or carrier involved, packages are piled up in different areas awaiting collection, several times a day. At Christmas time, couriers work incredibly hard, often having to manually load two to three pallets of boxes at a time, and trucks and vans roll in and out continuously.

IMAGE: the packing area in the Random House warehouse

At Random House, many times winners of distribution awards, the warehouse staff are mostly mature people who have been with the company (or other publishers) for many years.  Their love of reading, and working with books, makes up for the heavy and often repetitive work - freezing in the middle of winter, and melting in the humid Auckland summer.

What can go wrong? Delays in shipping and customs; printing errors not discovered until stock arrives; impossibly tight turnarounds to meet release dates following delays; courier overload at Christmas. As booksellers, you’ll know the entire litany!

For publishers there is also the fraught question of getting number projections right – ordering too few (unhappy booksellers), or too many (irate finance controllers), creates problems.

Returns. Good booksellers and reps who know their trade are the most efficient at minimising returns. Jill believes the waste involved in SOR is increasingly ecologically concerning and an issue long overdue for scrutiny  - yet another challenge the industry faces in the years ahead. With the people time and courier costs involved in returns, many in the trade would agree. (The Read is editorialising here.)

On a daily basis between 5,000 to 30,000 titles go through Random’s warehouse, hitting the higher figure when there are new title releases going out. The Read can’t begin to compute the likely figures in November and December, but the amazing thing is how well systems hold up under the pressure.

Now the bookseller guy or gal that triggered this series had one particular cost related question in mind... “How much does the box the books are packed in cost?” Your answer from Random House: “It varies widely according to size and quantities ordered, but on average, about $1 per box. As we use well over 100,000 cartons each year, good quality printers’ cartons are re-used to reduce both waste and costs”.

For the final in this series next week, we will look at the costs and returns over the entire process of creating and selling a book – with some possibly surprising news for booksellers.

Article by Jillian Ewart, writer for The Read