Coronavirus’s Early Effects on the Publishing Industry

Event cancellations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential fallout, with independent bookstores particularly at risk

It now feels like another lifetime when we sent the previous issue of Hot Sheet. The London Book Fair had just been called off but only with great reluctance and only after wide-scale publisher cancellations due to coronavirus. Many March conferences and festivals—such as SXSW—were still on.

As of today, large- and small-scale gatherings are prohibited across much of the United States and Europe, and bookstore events are being canceled to encourage social distancing. A small sampling of affected events in the publishing world include book festivals in Tucson, Los Angeles, and Virginia; the National Magazine Awards and National Book Critics Circle Awards; the ASJA annual conference; the IBPA annual conference; and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Publishers Weekly is maintaining a reverse chronological list of affected industry events and related news.

One event that was not canceled: the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference, which typically attracts more than 10,000 people. It was held March 4–7 this year in San Antonio, Texas, which had declared a state of disaster and public health emergency on March 2 due to a positive case of COVID-19. That day, AWP met with city officials and decided it was reasonably safe to move ahead. (Here is their statement.) However, AWP co–executive director Diane Zinna resigned from the organization on March 3 over the decision to hold the conference.

Many factors affect whether an organization like AWP can cancel such an event and come out the other side financially intact. Specific conditions must be met for event insurance to cover losses or for an event to cancel without being on the hook for venue fees. And that first week of March, there were few virus-related government mandates, which can help organizations avoid financial losses (e.g., through a force majeure clause). We have no insight into AWP’s contractual arrangements with conference centers or hotels, but we imagine the board closely scrutinized those contracts and had to make a difficult decision that was partly driven by finances. (Tellingly, AWP offered attendees the option of a refund or credit toward the 2021 conference, but exhibitors—who pay $650 or $950 for Bookfair space—could only receive a credit toward 2021, not a refund.) Complicating matters, AWP has already suffered significant organizational upheaval over the last couple years and may be ill prepared to weather a financial blow.

Bookfair exhibitors started to cancel on AWP that week, before the conference made the final call to move ahead. Allison Wright, the executive editor and publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review, based at the University of Virginia, told us, “We canceled the Monday before the conference began. At that point the university had asked us to ‘reconsider’ travel to ‘affected’ areas, which San Antonio was, and one of our staff members is immunocompromised. … I made the decision once the National Endowment for the Arts and Graywolf withdrew.” Wright considered attending on her own to speak on panels, but one had already fallen apart by Tuesday morning due to cancellations.

“It was a difficult decision to make because on the one hand it seemed like an overreaction; I thought it was unlikely anyone would get sick,” she says. “But I would have regretted it had we gone and anyone gotten sick. Regardless, I thought it was irresponsible of AWP not to cancel the conference. There was a lot of hand-wringing by organizations and individuals that could have been prevented, and I think people could have gotten refunds more easily had they canceled.”

We received an on-site report from writer Liz Fyne, who traveled from Pennsylvania to AWP as planned; it was her first time attending the conference. She described attendance as “meager,” with the biggest literary journals absent. While there, she wrote us, “The attendance seems to be constantly decreasing. The panels are almost all canceled. I went to two panels yesterday. I had thought that if panels would be canceled, it would be decided by Friday, but apparently many people were still canceling last minute. This morning I showed for a panel that was still on the schedule yesterday but was canceled as of this morning. Some people told me they went to panels that were not officially canceled, but the panelists all no-showed.” On the positive side, Fyne says there was easy access to the publishers who did attend.

Meanwhile, independent bookstores are increasingly shutting their doors to enforce social distancing—and have already started layoffs. Publishers Weekly reports that, starting last week, bookstores began seeing declining sales. Powell’s bookstore, based in Portland, Oregon, has dismissed about 85 percent of its workers temporarily and has warned that some layoffs would be permanent. McNally Jackson in New York City and Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C. temporarily laid off staff as well.

To survive the pandemic, it will be critical for indie stores—which already operate on razor-thin margins—to find ways to encourage continued purchasing. For example, Books Inc., with 10 stores in the Bay Area, now offers a free and reduced-price shipping program. New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia, offers free delivery to people’s homes. (For now, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million remain open, albeit with reduced hours. Indigo is closing its doors through March 27.) The good news: Libro.fm and Bookshop.org—which essentially serve as online retail partners for all independent bookstores—have seen sales skyrocket this month. Publishers Lunch is maintaining a crowdsourced list of stores that have closed but are still processing orders or delivering locally.

Commenting on the challenge facing bookstores, Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch says, “The needs will be profound. The first wave of impact hit airport and other travel-related bookstores, which often have remained open but have seen their traffic all but go away, and then college bookstores and independent stores in college towns, where increasingly the shutdowns are for the whole semester, not just a few weeks.” The American Booksellers Association offers a resource list to help booksellers during the pandemic and is urging booksellers to ask landlords for rent relief; The Book Industry Charitable Foundation is hoping to raise additional funds for the emergency.

For better or worse, Amazon appears to be deprioritizing certain types of products, including books. In an announcement to suppliers who use Amazon Seller Central and Fulfillment By Amazon (which is used by small, independent publishers but not the big ones), Amazon says it will prioritize household items and medical supplies, among other high-demand products, through April 5. That means third-party sellers who deal in non-prioritized merchandise cannot ship Amazon their products in the US and EU. (Note: If you publish via Amazon KDP, which uses print-on-demand technology, this particular announcement does not affect you.) To help meet surging demand, Amazon has announced 100,000 new full-time and part-time hires, but we imagine an issue with warehouse space may have contributed to the recent announcement. (Readers may recall when Amazon stopped placing orders with some publishers during the holiday season due to limited warehouse space. That hiccup was ultimately brief.)

Many major public library systems have closed their branches. To help libraries during the crisis, ebook distributor OverDrive is identifying options for free and low-cost ebook and digital audiobook collections to serve patrons. And ProQuest, which serves academic libraries, has issued a list of over 50 publishers that now provide unlimited access to ebook holdings for all patrons at no extra charge through mid-June.

In the educational realm, several publishers are making home learning easier through free online offerings.

• Scholastic offers a Learn at Home resource that covers pre-K through grade 6+, with about three hours of learning opportunities per day for up to 16 weeks.
• Barnes & Noble Education, in collaboration with Ingram and leading publishers, will provide free access to digital textbooks for students at BNED campuses that have closed.
• Epic! is expanding free access to their collection of over 40,000 books, audiobooks, videos, and more through June 30.
• Some children’s authors and publishers are granting permission for their work to be read online for educational purposes. As of today, we’ve found clear guidelines from Scholastic and Penguin Random House.
   
• Publishers Weekly offers an updated list of opportunities here.

Also, Publishers Weekly just announced that all of its digital issues and online content are available for free.

Authors and publishers worry about damage to new releases—and it’s possible publishers may delay the release of some new titles. In France, the big publishers have postponed new releases for the rest of March and April. For those releases moving ahead, virtual book events are being planned by authors, publishers, and bookstores alike, so promotion-savvy authors might want to proactively fashion an area in their home suitable for video broadcast. Already, author Arjun Basu has launched QuarantineBookClub.com: “Join your favorite authors on Zoom, where you can have spirited discussions from the privacy of our own quarantined space.” And several authors have organized a virtual children’s book festival.

There are always opportunities—or opportunists—in a crisis, publishers not excepted. A guide released on March 10 from Skyhorse on how to prevent coronavirus, written by a Chinese doctor at the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was the number-one title in the Amazon category of Vaccinations last week. And, no surprise, self-published titles on coronavirus have flooded Amazon, which is dealing with all types of profiteering and price-gouging on the site.

Bottom line: News articles on coronavirus predict that the worst is yet to come. As of today, in the writing and publishing community, the entity that appears most at risk is the independent bookstore. If you rely on or value the store in your community, we urge you to support them. One easy way to do so is through Libro.fm, the digital audiobook company. Currently, 100 percent of payments from any new Libro membership, including gift memberships, go to your local bookstore. Also, for print orders, consider Bookshop.org, which funnels profits to independent bookstore partners. (Read our profile of the site from last year.)

All arts and culture organizations expect to take a significant hit from COVID-19. If you are involved with a writing and publishing nonprofit, the following free online class on March 19 may be of interest to you: Arts and Culture Sector and the Coronavirus: What We Know and How to Move Forward.