Book Label Argument

One of the biggest pre-sales topic of discussion with BookAccents prospects is "Why do I need to print book labels?"  Good Question!

Now I do agree that if you only have and sell ONLY brand new books, affixing labels to them might seem a bit silly.  But even then, there are a few arguments for ... Labels on New Books:

1. The ISBNs and UPCs on books are not totally uniform.  I doubt that there exists any software package on this planet that will correctly price all books and handle their inventory merely by scanning a code that the manufacturer prints on the books.  
   
   Do you want to do an experiment?  Take a bar-code reader that is not being hosted with a bookseller software package. and scan what you think is the ISBN on a variety of books.  Compare what you get when scanning the bar-codes vs. the ISBN printed on the book.  When developing our software, I was amazed by these inconsistencies.
   
   I know not why the publishers do this, but they surely do.  I guess that's why we are here with our software; to make your life easier.  When each book is labeled, it is much easier to process at the cash register.
   
   It is far better to resolve your pricing issues before the customer comes to the front counter to check out.  It can get really busy up these, and that is not the place to determine if the ISBN that you think belongs to a books really does, and if the employee knows enough to scan the correct bar-code.
    

2. I believe in progress, but there is a universal rule governing almost all things.  Things are as they are because they work best that way.  Our world's religions and government have made rules for people to live by, its been that way for thousands of rules.  Things have just evolved to be like they are.  If it were better a different way, that is likely how it would be.
    

• OK, please stay with me.  Go to most of the big chains.  Look at their books.  What do you see?  Most likely labels on the back of their books.  Why?  It must work better that way.

Now the argument get much easier when talking about store selling a variety of books, New, Used, Remainder, High Value.  And alas, that is exactly what we do, and that is how BookAccents has evolved to be what it is.

BookAccents treats every book as an individual.  Lets assume that you have a certain title in your store... but there are several flavors, and they are priced accordingly:

What ya gonna do?  I know, write the price lightly in pencil in the inside of the front cover.  Go ahead... but I thought you were trying to automate you store?  We have this exact set of conditions occurring all of the time.  We have developed BookAccents to thrive in this environment.

• Let's make things a bit more interesting.  You sell your books on the Internet.  Which book to you pick and where is the book stocked that you just sold.  They are all shelved together?  That's a problem.  They are stocked in different parts of the store.  That's a problem too.

• Assuming that you (or an employee) found the correct copy, how are you going to deplete that one from inventory?   Virtually impossible without each book being identified.  When each book is labeled, books of the same title can be distributed to different shelves so that they can be seen my more customers, but can also easily be found when required.

• Ah, you say you saw some software that brings up a list of all available copies of an ISBN when you are checking a customer out, and you select which one you picked, and it prices it accordingly, and relives inventory.  I though you wanted to automate your store?

• What about cost of the labels?  Approximately 5,000 labels and ribbons costs $63.30.  That is about 1.25 cents each.  Shipping that $45.00 book when the $5.00 one was ordered will pay for  3,600 labels.  

• What about the costs in labor?  You have to experience BookAccents to believe the level of efficiency you will achieve.  We process up to a thousand books per day in our business, which is a combination of a book store, Internet, and quantity sales to schools, and churches.  The cost of labeling each book vs. the cost of making mistakes is really insignificant

• Ah, you say "Doesn't the label damage the book?  How do I get them to peel off?"  We "have searched the world" to find the perfect label for this purpose.  After trying many glue, ribbon and paper combinations, we have had them designed and manufactured just for us.  They do no damage to the books, and are very easy to get off.

• "I want to use a less expensive printer."  You get what you pay for.  We have been selling Zebra Printers with our other applications for fifteen years.  We have hundreds of them in the field.  The failure rate is so low that it is, too, insignificant.  Plus this Zebra Printer can be used in a Thermal Transfer mode.  That means that a ribbon is used to product the image rather that using heat sensitive labels.  there is a slight additional cost in printing this way, but the durability makes up for the slight cost.  The inexpensive printer will fool you.  Check the price per label... it is outrageous.  In any case, BookAccents uses the  Zebra TLP2844 Printer.

The Argument Against Labels:

Well, I'm not saying we created a Utopia.  There are times that I say "Wow, I wish we didn't have to print all of those labels!".  Inefficiency exists in these circumstances:

1. When we make a determination that we have found an Internet Hot Seller we make an effort to buy all of that title that are available.  Sometimes that amounts to hundreds books.  We place these books in a bulk storage area, and only print 10 labels.  We just know that these books are there, and we count and report  that inventory manually.
    

2. We have a substantial business selling books to local school districts and churches.  They will generally order large quantities of single titles.  An order will sometimes total in the thousands of dollars.  Additionally these books are generally procured under purchase orders.  Since these books are never really in our Inventory, printing labels only to delete them is silly.  We do not run these books through the normal BookAccents process.  Rather we  use Quicken (R) to invoice these orders.

These circumstance only account for a small percentage of the overall transactions we perform each month.  I am happy to trade off the inefficiencies of these for the massive benefits reaped by using labels.

IN SUMMARY:
 

• If you own  a store that sells other than brand new books, there is no more efficient was to stock and sell books.
   

• The cost in labor and supplies is insignificant, compared to the benefits reaped.
   

• We wrote BookAccents for ourselves.  In designing and implementing the software, we carefully considered the pros and cons or each aspect.  After much deliberation, we implemented BookAccents were each book requires a unique label.  Considering the alternatives, I would implement it the same way if I were starting the design from scratch today.