Timewaster's Guide Archive

Yep. Lots of questions and I’ll bet even Covenant employees don’t know most of the answers. I’ve got a few thoughts but I could end up totally wrong on all of them.

 

1)       Will DB and Seagull stores continue to remain open in all locations? It would be great to have access to so many stores without the DB/DB and Covenant/Seagull focus. But if you give top shelf space to DB and Covenant books in all stores you will have to carry less inventory. What does that do to other publishers or authors who may not have as much clout? And realistically can you expect DB to keep stores open that are within a block of each other?

2)       Will Covenant remain as a separate imprint? If so, will DB move their LDS fiction to Covenant, non-fiction to DB, and national to Shadow Mountain? Or will they still all dabble in a little bit of everything?

3)       Will DB and Seagull share catalogs or will there still be a divide there?

4)       If Lew sold Covenant because it was struggling, DB may cut back on the number of titles published by Covenant. Or they might really help sales by promoting more fiction. If DB bought Covenant because it liked how well Covenant was doing fiction, it could be more or less left alone.

5)       Now that Covenant is owned by DB, there is no need for the restrictive contracts. Does that mean things like the promo clause will go away too?

6)       Will the respective companies be run separately or will they start combining and standardizing?

7)       Is this bad for independents? Or will DB and Covenant now be able to do away with the huge volume discounts since they are the only LDS chain that can buy in volume?

 

Lots of other questions, but in general my guess is that some stores will close, Covenant will remain a separate imprint, top authors will make more money, smaller authors will struggle a little, opportunities will be opened, marketing resources will be combined, fiction will not go away, contracts will improve, other LDS publishers are going to have the same difficulties they’ve been facing in the last few years, and independent bookstores won’t be especially hurt or helped. It mirrors what’s been happening in the national market, It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.