Pacific Press is Getting Out of the Business of Operating Bookstores
by
AT News Team, October 9, 2013
The Adventist Review released a news bulletin this morning announcing that Pacific Press Publishing Association, one of two publishing houses operated by the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the United States, will return responsibility for the 25 bookstores that it operates to the local conferences where they are located. This decision was made at a board meeting last week.
The board “voted to request termination of the management agreements” for the stores, which it has managed “over the course of nearly 15 years,” a statement from the organization said. The outlets served “nearly half of the North American Division membership.” A plan to terminate management agreements for the stores should be in place by December 31, 2013, the statement indicated.
“The board recognized that the current business model for these management agreements has experienced challenges due to changing trends in technology and the way people access information,” the PPPA announcement said. Pacific Press took over the operation of the stores from local conferences because the conferences had decided they could no longer subsidize the outlets and few of the stores were making a profit.
An Adventist member who has worked in the publishing industry told Adventist Today that the bookstore business all across the country has been in decline for more than a decade due to the boom in online book sales. "The Adventist Book Centers were mostly located in or near conference offices and away from general commercial traffic and in most cases offered a narrow range of inventory." One exception, he noted, is the Potomac Conference Adventist Book Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, located in a large shopping center.
This decision is viewed by other observers as a consequence of the fact that merger plans between Pacific Press and the Review & Herald Publishing Association have been called off. Pacific Press said it would not leave any local conferences or members without easy access to church materials. “We are committed to making all quarterlies, magazines, books, and music easier than ever to order,” says Dale Galusha, PPPA president. “For most products, the local church won’t even notice a change in how they are ordered or delivered.” These materials are available online at www.AdventistBookCenter.com.
Pacific Press is a suburb of Boise, Idaho, and produces books and magazines for all ages. The company, which has been in operation since 1874. It moved from the San Francisco Bay area, where it was originally, to Idaho in 1984. That move was intended to reduce operating costs and a few years later Review & Herald moved from Takoma Park to Hagerstown, Maryland, for the same reason.
Have all the business models been explored? Why not let schools serve as local stores? Sales would increase when profits go to the school, there would be no overhead, no management cost. Just drop shipping cost that could be provided at Conference Offices in which the school could pick up. Contest rewards could be given to students that read the most books. Local produce and craft items could be included in the store. Every body wins. Etc. Etc.
Check bookstores to see the future. The largest: Barnes and Noble, Borders, and many small independent ones have closed, or in the process of closing.
I prefer old fashioned books, but the future seems to be on reading from Kindle, or digital books. Ask any college teacher about student's reading habits: it is very discouraging. And none are choosing religious books.
Elaine, What you say is true. I wonder what will fall next due to poor management. As usual memberd have no say in almost everything the Conference does, just pray and pay.
We can lament that market forces have overtaken outdated concepts. Or, we can recognize the realities of the marketplace, embrace the changes they have imposed and blaze a path into the future.
Our greatest challenge is not the mechanics of how we get products to the marketplace, but having products that will sell more widely because they are current and relevant to the marketplace. This means we must have a diversity of products that are current and relevant to today's consumers instead of continuing to push outdated products that are failures in the general market, such as the works of one particular author whose works we think everyone should be reading.
Not sure which 'particular author' you are referring to. But if it's EGW, the ultimate author of her works was the Holy Spirit.
It would be sad to believe that the Holy Spirit makes mistakes. Either she wrote her own beliefs or there are millions who choose to believe that it was the Holy Spirit's writing. But that cannot be proved.
The market for Seventh-day Adventist publishing house products in the U.S. is too small and steadily growing smaller.
Nothing the publishing houses can do can change that.
When publishing houses supplied a key church evangelistic endeaver, 'Colporteuring,' publishing grew organically.
Having Colporteured for a summer in 1961, I have a sense of these things. 400 miles from home, living in the pastor's spare room, riding a bicycle between houses within range of Iron Mountain, MI. My father colporteured as a student in the early 1930s depression era walkign between farms in central IL, staying with the last farm of the day, in exchange for lending a hand with the evening chores.
Publishing Houses no longer have that market to absorb their products.
If Encyclapedia Britanica had to abandon paper, Seventh-day Adventist publishing houses should take note and arrange to quietly stop the presses for good.
It seems we (AT comment writers) are making much adieu about not very much.
Pacific Press is getting out of the bookstore business because that business, due to technology, is changing; or actually has changed.
The product offerings need to adapt in format. The content is, and always has been relevant; and will always be so.
Relevance and popularity isn’t the same thing. Some relevant things aren’t popular and aren’t necessarily designed to be.
When a business closes due to declining market share of their products, it because they have failed to adapt to changing times or they have been mismanaged. The fact is clear that PP managers have not been visionary. BlackBerry’s failure to keep up with Apple and Google was a consequence of errors in its strategy and vision. As a result, they have 1 Billion in loss and cut 4,500 in jobs.
Does PP release it financial balance sheet for public accountability? Is their CEO forced to answer questions from the pew?
The answer to both questions is "no." Church leadership acted to reduce the bleeding at R&H only after they became such a financial drain on the church that it could no longer be ignored.
As an author I've had dealings with both publishing houses, though much more with R&H. That experience has left me with the perception that Pacific Press has typically been better managed and more innovative with their products, though not by a wide margin. I assign the greater responsibility for the current situation to higher church leaders because their devotion to traditional publishing concepts has prevented them from seeing market changes and allowing effective changes to be made in a timely manner. This has made responding to the current situation more difficult.
If PP (and RH) publish and nobody reads what they publish will they make a sound?
As a 25 year colporteur I experienced PPPA take over the LE work from the Conferences and within 5 years there was no LE work left at all. So it is no surprise that after a dozen years of taking over the ABC stores that they hand back what is left to the Conferences. If its profit driven then it needs to be put into private hands and if gospel driven then subsidized by the church.
Probably run by a committee of preachers…
The traditional bookstore model is under pressure as a whole due to technology changes and calling the old Book and Bible houses "ABC's" has alot of market perception issues as people aren't sure if they're selling Bibles or Beer there… 🙂
YET, there are PLENTY of Christian bookstores that are very successful, profitable and growing…I would hope that someone is thinking outside the box and looking to see what's actually working at these stores….
The problem: While Christian bookstores are not limited to any one denomination, ABC stores will rarely carry non-SDA publications without careful approval. If they adopted a policy like Amazon where they could advertise in the Review and official publications, and then sold on the internet it would be a new approach. Better yet, if they could hook up with Amazon, it would be a winner.
I couldn’t agree more about gertairics. I miss sitting with some of the elderly individuals I used to help and they would tell me stories for hours about the things that they witness when they were younger, and the lives that they lived up to the point that they needed care. I have always felt that the elderly know how to live their lives better than anyone, and they for sure never take it for granted! Sometimes the people taking care of them are not good people though, and it always breaks my heart to see someone talking badly to an elderly man or woman.I like how you made a switch from little tiny babies that have no real experience with life, to elderly men and women who have lived life to its fullest and still have more life to share with others. Such opposites!