Reps are in jeopardy.

One of the most devastating changes wrought by the upheaval in the book business has been the shift from traveling sales representatives to telemarketers. (See Howdy, Brownsville, New York Calling. Have We Got a Great Bio of Spinoza for Y’all).

“Travelers,” as they were originally called (and still are in some circles), are an endangered species holding on by their fingernails.  Their fates are inextricably attached to that other threatened breed called independent bookstores, and with the advent of computerized ordering, heavy big-box-store discounting and all the advantages offered by Amazon, traveling book reps find themselves in the same position that itinerant knife-sharpeners held a century ago.

“It’s a great irony,” one member of the traveling clan told Publishers Weekly‘s Judith Rosen, “that physical bookstores that carry thousands of books that readers want are losing out because cutting people out of the transaction is rewarded with the lowest prices. It’s the great devaluation of people in the financial transaction that is hitting the bookstores especially hard right now.”

A book industry that depends on human beings?  Preposterous!

But, reports Rosen, travelers are a rugged clan and they’re starting to fight fire with fire. “In addition to iPads stuffed with digital collateral material that not so long ago filled an entire car trunk, many groups rely on sophisticated database systems to let buyers know about previous seasonal ordering patterns and what similar stores are doing with a particular title.”

“To the extent that we still have small publishers and small bookstores, I’m going to have a job,” said one rep, who thinks of himself and his colleagues as “the missionaries of the church that is publishing.”

To which we say a fervent Hallelujah!

Richard Curtis