Right now I'm fucked up in the crib eating Prongles (tl;dr: dentist work) but y'all. y'all. *y'all.*
How y'all gonna get on Barack Hussain Obama's Copyright-Protected Whole-Ass-Fucking Internet© and freely pirate books among yourselves and then be Shocked Pikachu that American Girl--or any other book publisher--sees low books sales and discontinues, revamps, and /or reworks books to try and make the books side profitable?
If a company doesn't see book sales, they don’t check to see how it’s doing on Twitter or IG. They get rid of the books.
This isn't just true for AG, a company that--if you look at the quarterly reports--is now starting to return to the black after closing multiple stores and reformatting a lot of products to get sales up and costs down. It's all print publishing. Comics, books, graphic novels, etc. No one is making boo-koo bucks off a paperback children's book.
Why do we only have two volumes now that are thin and cut whole stories out? Why do we have no Welcome To Melody's World books, or Short Stories, or hell, even mystery books like we did even a few years ago? Because Books Don't Make Companies Lots of Money, and if a Book Doesn't Sell, It Goes To Book Hell.
The Big Five Publishers might make several millions or billions, but AG--and its parent, Mattel--are not a Big Five Publisher. Publishing is a small part of their company money nowadays. They have to look at how books are selling doing and, if a book isn't doing well, they're going to cut it, discount it, and then eventually clear it out. We still have central series in the two-book form because AG wants to keep the books with the characters as that's their thing, but they also can't afford--that's right--afford--to lose money on books and ride the red wave of loss when the books aren't showing they're bringing in the money.
Companies will in many cases completely discontinues a whole three or five book series just one book in because it didn't hit its sell marks. Authors plead and plead and plead, please buy the books, because if they don't show sales? They don't get sequels, or contracts, or even to finish a series. Book creators beg and beg and beg people not to pirate their things, explain how it hurts them, and then--should a comic series or book be discontinued for low sales, people go "but it's so popular online!"
Yeah, online popular is not "it made us the money to consider keeping this around" popular, and y'all need to get that through your brains if you want any physical publication to stay around.
Contrary to the beliefs of people who have no idea how a business works--and look, I only have an English Writing degree, but Google works for you if you know how to use it to do research on things and educate yourself--publishing books is not a business that prints money hand over fist and has authors rolling in the dough unless your name is Terfy McTerf, Author Of Wizard At School Book. Self-sustaining Authors are an outlier. The average author makes just enough on a book to maybe pay the light bill and some degree of the cable and feel like the years they spent writing and agenting and negotiating weren't a total loss. Most have day jobs, and those that don't have various unseen privileges. I can write all day because I'm supported. Thoreau had his mom make him meals and do his laundry. HP Lovecraft was a racist.
After all the marketing, sales, paying authors, etc, are done, the margins on print media are thin enough you could shave your hair with them. If a publisher looks at their spreadsheets and see they aren't making money on books, they're going to discontinue books. No matter how many people want books. Publishing is notoriously risk-averse as well--and when risk pops up, they throw the baby out the window and wash the tub out for something that'll make funds.
No publishing company makes money on physical books like they did circa 30 years ago, when I was a teen. Who remembers that lovely post some weeks back about how color printing is expensive? It’s telling y'all the ugly truth. I've seen the difference between B&W and Color printing costs, and all I do is self pub. I would not do an all color book, with the jump in paper prices, if I knew that I would probably not make back the cost of the book. Children's books aren't just thin because they're for kids. There's a reason a lot of junior novelizations only have color inserts, not full color pages--because the very moment you ask for an all color book you're looking at a significant jump in printing costs. They don't print on inkjet printer paper for a color book that's intended to last and look nice, not spotty and splotchy. Graphic Novels? are not aimed at an eight year old, are not printed on the high gloss stuff--it’s thicker than B&W but not as high quality as AG Book Paper--and often cost 12-15 bucks a volume. And while the small sliver--yes, I said sliver, let’s all be real here--of AG collectors might jump up and down for an all in one volume of Felicity's Great Horse Hits, the average parent buying stuff for Olivia and Liam and Penn is not going to drop 30 bucks on a kid's book volume their kid might not like 3-4 years down the line that they will not make the eBay cost back on.
So AG isn't going to make any more Welcome books--and woof, the money on those, the costs to license and verify every item from museums and cite sources and photography credits and museum notes for every item they post in them that's not their own, they can't just google search up and yoink from Pinterest for a book that is a profit company's creation. They're not going to make mysteries that didn't sell, or short stories that cost a lot. They're going to stick to the Central Series for each character, do some extra books if they can, and if it don't do anything in their money tree? out it goes. They are--as I hear and heard a lot whenever someone says we shouldn't have dolls of color or diversity, fucking hell, I've been doing this since 2005--not a charity. They are not in the business of making you happy and patting your head. It's the same with books as with DoC. If they don't do well, AG gets the message, and the message is "this is not money."
Archive.org? It has e-book limitations and some of the stuff they have is super sketchy. They don't work the way a library does. It’s not a true library and to claim so is to lie to yourself. I try to only use it for things that are either so old as to not be cost effective to buy, for books I already own and have no idea what box they’re in, and things that are checked out and returned, and even then I tread lightly because they’re not a library.
The library? Is best if you have access. And if the book's not there or not available? REQUEST IT. More copies of a book get added when a book is popular enough it's hard to keep in circulation for everyone that wants it--and gets pulped if it doesn't show circulation. Because much like a warehouse full of unsold Marie-Grace dolls in 2012, a library does not have endless shelf space. If they see a book is sitting there and isn't circulating, they'll cut it down to one copy--and that can be across the whole library system, not just one branch. Ask me about waiting seven to ten months for a ten-year old book on watercoloring that has one copy in circulation across the whole system I use. A book having a long wait is a sign it's popular. Until it's not, and then out the extra copies--or the only copy--it goes. Hi, the copy of Foxes of First Dark I literally bought from the system i checked it out from, because it's not a hot book. Libraries report back how books circulate. Archive.org or your google drive do not.
If you live outside of the US and Canada? AG does in fact ship international if you call them directly. Yes you might have to pay high shipping, yes it may take a month, but AG will take your money ship to you and work it out if you call them and ask. They don't have stores overseas because they mostly failed. The ugly truth is that a handful of people in Europe aren't enough to sustain the costs of working out of there. You're small in the eyes of the company sales. (That's also why the UK can't get doll repairs anymore. Thank Brexit for that.)
But you still can't get the books right now and you want them? I'm sorry. But books are not an essential need. None of us need a single goddamn AG book to live, and I have a collection of books that spans six shelves in my library I’ve been putting together since I got a copy of Meet Addy and her paper dolls in the mid-90s.
If you cannot afford a book and libraries don't have it, then look on the secondary market, and if you can't find it or afford it then you need to live with the fact that it's not something to have right now.
But you really really want it? Then pay something for it.
Art creation is not free. Writing books is not free. It costs time and in some--many--cases money to get to a point where you even know it’s around. If you want art and nice things to remain in the world? Then you can't just expect it for free because it's what you want to look at--because people who make the media you consume can't pay We Energy in e-popularity for the light bill.
I'm not going to say don't pirate ever. Hypocrisy would be me. I was a child of Napster in college--yeah, I’m old and bitter. But I'm not finna be the one to sit here, pirate a entire just out book, and act shocked that a company discontinues that same book that I didn't buy--because when they saw the numbers, the numbers said "oh, no one's buying this."
And if you can buy an outfit from AG, you can buy the damn books.
