'Wave of returns' fear as printing demand escalates and Amazon 'scoops up' stock

Publishers say they are printing books earlier and in larger quantities as retail giants such as Amazon order “tons of books” to beat supply chain problems, prompting fears of a “huge wave” of returns after Christmas.

Issues including a shortage of HGV drivers and paper, alongside delays and increased shipping costs caused by Brexit and Covid-19 complications have led to the moves, sources told The Bookseller. The situation could leave indies struggling for reprints of bestsellers in the crucial next few months as larger retailers are prioritised.

A senior publishing figure, who asked to remain anonymous, said big houses had been printing “longer”, meaning they were ordering more months' worth of stock to meet demand and avoid future supply chain problems. This in turn has ramped up demand on paper and printing firms, while Amazon orders have followed suit, meaning the situation has "spiralled".

They explained: “With full-colour books, there’s a problem with shipping and the cost of shipping, the cost of printing which has gone up, paper stocks, all sorts of things.

“With black and white books, what has begun to happen more over the last few weeks, all publishers started to print longer in order to try and cover themselves. So the printers have started to put caps on how much you can print because they’re dealing with all the publishers, all the publishers are desperate for their backlist and frontlist to be printed. Because of this, the time between ordering and delivering books is getting longer and longer.”

They said Amazon was responding by upping orders, adding: "They’re ordering tons of books which will be sitting in their warehouses so there’s this strange bonanza going on where we’re all having these huge sales through Amazon. The issues with the supply chain include issues with staff at warehouses, at Amazon and publishers... Amazon have been scooping up stock wherever they can because of issues with lorry drivers.”

“The whole thing is fascinating to watch but scary to be in the middle of,” they said. “It’s absolutely shaping the market.” 

The publisher believes the fallout will eventually “expose some of the ridiculousness” of the business model of sale and return. They told The Bookseller: “There’s going to be all this stock sitting there at Amazon and W H Smith and Waterstones and come the New Year there will probably be this awful great huge wave of returns.”

They said publishers were concerned for independent bookstores being left out in the cold and so their own company is negotiating where possible, explaining: “We’re really conscious of indies, we’re trying to deal with the big guys but trying to make sure we can help the indies. One of the things we’re starting to do is, Amazon will ask for 50,000 copies of something and we’ll say ‘We’ll give you 30,000 and talk again in a few weeks’, thereby juggling and negotiating to make sure we have enough to cover the entire market rather than just cover the big guys.”

They also confirmed reports that Amazon has been offering money upfront to bring in staff, sometimes taking them straight from other publishers’ warehouses. They said: “As far as I know we haven’t lost anyone ourselves but we know from our warehouse staff of people where Amazon has steamed in and offered these golden handshakes.”

Amazon declined to comment on any of the claims when approached by The Bookseller for this article.

Another senior trade figure agreed Amazon was buying large amounts of books, but stressed “everyone” was doing the same thing. They said: “I think it’s HGV drivers plus Brexit which is a really strong factor in this, as well as post-Covid stuff. Also, book sales have gone up during Covid and there’s a bit of an undersupply of printing. It’s a low-margin business and you have to be very accurate in how much demand you’ll get and at the moment there’s just too much demand on paper and on printing. There’s a lot of worldwide demand.”

They added: “The real issue this Christmas is going to be illustrated books. When a book does well, normally you can get more reprints before Christmas. But the printers are all in China or continental Europe and they’re all saying there’s no capacity to reprint.”

However, they insisted everyone was “doing their best” to serve their customers, including Amazon. They added: “There is more tension in the industry because of all of this, it is the big issue. There’s nothing that can be done apart from everyone continuing to try their best. What people are doing is printing more books than normal, particularly with illustrated books, to mitigate this. It will be a bit like buying the big toys at Christmas, I hope that it means people will consider other books that they wouldn’t have thought about buying."

James Daunt, m.d. of Waterstones, likened the situation to the shortage of toilet rolls in shops at the start of the pandemic. He commented: “There is some panic buying going on and it does mean that there will be cases where one retailer or another has got all the stock and they’re not available to the others, which is a shame.”

He agreed indie booksellers could suffer more from the situation, saying: “For the smaller guys, the smaller independents, frankly it’s not particularly fair with Amazon sitting on a great lot of books that they could sell and want to sell but can’t get hold of. And then they get returned in the New Year and everyone’s a loser in that case.”

However, he suggested the situation was not too dissimilar to previous years for his own firm, explaining: “I think we’re being sort of measured, this time of year we stock up to the gunwales in any case. We have a capacity and the aim is that you go into the Christmas selling period full, filling your warehouse and filling your shop. And we’ll do that again.  

“At this time of year we all talk up a panic, the reality is the same every year really, we all have nervous breakdowns and then we settle down in November and get on with it.”

Jess Allan, manager and buyer at Queen's Park Books in London, praised the publishing staff she worked with but suggested a decision had been made “high up” to prioritise big retailers, which sometimes left stores like her own short. She told The Bookseller: “There has definitely been some supply issues and it is disheartening to see that indies are not getting the big hitters on time while Waterstones and Amazon are prioritised and have them by release date. A lot of the time it's signed stock that is delayed despite the same signed titles being available at Waterstones. But also unsigned copies. We had one that came to us a week late. Most are just a handful of days."

Amid the surge in demand for its services, printing firm Clays has experienced problems in recent weeks and, according to c.e.o. Paul Hulley, is currently “recovering from production disruption due to paper”. He said: “It was the same issue affecting the whole of the UK at the moment with the lack of HGV drivers. So the paper was in stock with the suppliers but supply into ourselves was affected because there weren’t enough drivers to bring this into us.

"We didn’t completely dry up on the paper front but production plans were affected as we tried to adjust plans to react to paper as it arrived. The paper suppliers are responding very well in overcoming the national difficulties on that front and we have seen deliveries return back to usual levels."

He confirmed a myriad of problems were hitting the supply chain, emphasising that paper and driver availability are not the only issues. “There are also challenges and price pressures around other key components, raw material supply being behind most of them with recycled paper for greyboard, resins for inks and polymer for laminates to name just a few. Let's not also forget the rising costs in energy and what this will mean to printers.”