Shoplifting at Bookstores

[Mulboyne]

Young readers getting into hot water

Itai News highlights a Yomiuri article on shoplifting at bookstores. Publishers and major book chains estimate that the annual cost of book theft at 1161 large stores which were surveyed earlier this year runs to around 4 billion yen (around 1.4% of total sales). If the same pattern is true across all the nation's stores then the damage could total 19 billion yen and be a key contributing factor to the parlous financial state of many companies in the industry. 40% of books stolen are manga while 30% are photo collections. Also particularly noticeable is an increase in young book thieves - a new security company set up by the big chains went into operation at the beginning of March and has already apprehended 3 primary school kids and 17 middle school students in a total of 60 busts. It's not directly mentioned in the Yomiuri, but many blame the ease with which books can be sold on to second-hand dealer Book Off for the increase in underage thieves. When asked why their were stealing, as many as 70% said they wanted money. Booksellers say that thieves often operate in pairs: one keeping staff busy with a question while the other stuffs tomes into a modified pushchair or an overcoat with hidden pockets. The article goes on to mention that the shops aren't receiving as much support from the felons' parents as they would like. One protested to staff "It's such a terrible shame the children are arrested. Why do you have to make it so easy to steal?" while another parent who was contacted said "Surely there's no problem if he just pays". Another bookseller reports that a parent who came to collect one young thief said "Bad luck on getting caught".

See also FG Threads: Big Bookshops; Book Off Offers Sop To Copyright Holders and Don't Just Write It, Bookle It

[Midwinter]

Won't someone plleeaasseee think of the children?!

[alicia454]

Wow, considering the human right abuses (ie. torture & forced confessions) by the Japanese police, injustices by the justice system here, and social stigma from being convicted, you would figure than any decent parent would try their best to make sure that their child does not engage in any criminal behavour, since it might carry forward to adulthood and destroy the rest of their lives.

If it was my child, I would take them back to the store and both of us would go on our hands and knees and beg for forgiveness from the store owner, and suggest some free work or other trial that my child would do for reparations to the store. I am not an advocate of hitting any child, but the child needs to understand consequences to their actions, because when they are older, their parents won't be able to bail them out, and the police will hit/torture them much harder than anyone else will.

[ttjereth]

Wow, considering the human right abuses (ie. torture & forced confessions) by the Japanese police, injustices by the justice system here, and social stigma from being convicted, you would figure than any decent parent would try their best to make sure that their child does not engage in any criminal behavour, since it might carry forward to adulthood and destroy the rest of their lives.

If it was my child, I would take them back to the store and both of us would go on our hands and knees and beg for forgiveness from the store owner, and suggest some free work or other trial that my child would do for reparations to the store. I am not an advocate of hitting any child, but the child needs to understand consequences to their actions, because when they are older, their parents won't be able to bail them out, and the police will hit/torture them much harder than anyone else will.

None of the bad police stuff matters if you're under 18. You can cut off a toddlers head and mount it on a pike and only serve a few years in prison, to be released, anonymously, back into society again.

[Mulboyne]

The official Yomiuri translation of that article is now here. There's also this short article:

While many bookstores are facing a serious shoplifting problem, small and midsize shops, whose sales are declining, are unable to afford effective countermeasures. Publishers and book dealers, in cooperation with secondhand booksellers, are moving to take antishoplifting measures such as putting IC tags on books. According to the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development, the number of bookstores nationwide is declining, with a drop of about 4,000 from 2001 to 2007. The organization believes some of these closed bookstores include those that went bankrupt partly due to shoplifting.

Many bookstores have taken anticrime measures such as setting up anti-shoplifting security devices to detect books near entrances not cleared by the cashier and employing security guards. However, such measures are costly, and shoplifters tend to target small bookstores that take few anticrime measures. The organization is urging bookstores to put IC tags in their books, and for secondhand booksellers not to accept stolen books. "We expect shoplifting losses may decrease if secondhand bookstores stop accepting books that shoplifters stole to sell," said Takeshi Murakoshi, head of the organization's division studying IC tags and an adviser to major bookstore Yurindo Co.

[Takechanpoo]

I often used to shoplift in small-time candy stores and Ito Yokado in my grade school student days because of my little poket money. Especially in Ito Yokado I had often stolen bento Sarturday noon and eaten it at the landing. And in junior high school days I had stolen Nike sneeker and sold it to classmate a few times. Manbiki is nothing but robbery.

[uchimizu]

Hi,

I had the impression that some minor offences (like stealing bikes, cheating on subway tickets...) were some kind of tolerated in Japan. I do not know if the shoplifting at bookstore is among them.

It must be very difficult for bookstore owners to check there is no theft, as the bookstores are always full of people doing "tachiyomi" (read while standing).

I still wonder if 1.5% theft is so much. I vaguely remember figures mentioning that in French shops, around 5 to 10% of the goods are stolen.

[Charles]

Ah, this is a good place to plug one of my favorite BlogTV videos:

[SIZE="4"]Manga Causes Crime[/SIZE]

I particularly like this story, not because of the content, but because it occasionally gets insane comments from rabid mangaheads.

[Taro Toporific]

I still wonder if 1.5% theft is so much. I vaguely remember figures mentioning that in French shops, around 5 to 10% of the goods are stolen.

That's a good question about whether 1.5% is a good rate of shrinkage. Here's what I found out...

[INDENT]Norris Bookstore evaluates security measures for shoplifting
The Daily Northwestern (Northwesten University, Evanston, Illinois)
.... the rate of stolen, lost or damaged books at Norris is about 5 percent, which he said is twice as high as the national average among other Barnes & Noble college bookstores.
Student Book Exchange, 1737 Sherman Ave., has a rate of stolen books of less than 1 percent, textbook manager Stuart Lundquist said. ....[/INDENT]

Shame and Shoplifting at Wal-Mart
BusinessWeek.com - July 24, 2007
...shoplifting and employee theft, has long been below the industry average of roughly 1.6% of sales...

[amdg]

What I want to know is, for those kids who were stealing just so they could sell the books on later - what kind of books were they snatching?



…Later at bookoff, 12 year old walks up to the counter…


‘Yes, I’d like to sell my copy of, um, this one.’

‘O.K. let’s see what we have here .. Kurt Goedel’s Theories on Incompleteness?’

‘Yeah, I couldn’t finish it.’

‘Very good sir, here’s your money.’

[Charles]

What I want to know is, for those kids who were stealing just so they could sell the books on later - what kind of books were they snatching?

That's a topic in the video I posted. Stores like Book Off have flyers advertising which manga have the highest resale value. Usually that's popular manga series. So the kids go out and steal those manga, then sell them to Book Off. It's a steal-to-order business. So the used bookstores were talking about discontinuing their flyers, to stop educating thieves on what to shoplift.
That video was from 2002 so I have no idea what has happened since then.

[Catoneinutica]

...
It must be very difficult for bookstore owners to check there is no theft, as the bookstores are always full of people doing "tachiyomi" (read while standing).

...

TACHIYOMI! Son, that's an institution in Japan that kicks ass!

-catone
-I'll admit it: if there's a plastic wrapper that's getting between me and my tachiyomi pleasure, I'll look around warily, make sure the coast is clear, and remove it, stuffing it behind some copies of Entertainment Weekly

[Mulboyne]

When you are running a business near break-even, a relatively small increase or decrease in sales can have a disproportionate impact on profitability. That's particularly true when your marginal cost of sales is low so this 1 or 2% could be serious for small stores. Especially if it is a new cost which they haven't had to build into their calculations before.

The publishing and bookselling business in Japan also has an odd structure. Books are subject to a retail price maintenance scheme which means that no store can sell stock at a discounted price. All unsold stock is returned to the publisher. If a store loses a book to a shoplifter, they not only cannot earn their margin on the book, they also cannot return it so they will have to pay for all lost items.

Recently, some publishing companies have set up a store which specializes in selling remaindered books. Book House Jimbocho sells stock at as much as 60% off list price. The books are just about to go out of print and you can also order over the net. Since publishers are getting a higher return rate from stores these days, this is an attempt to get some cash out of old stock without undermining the business of existing book stores.

TACHIYOMI! Son, that's an institution in Japan that kicks ass!

Technology means that some people are now taking digital photos of articles that interest them rather than buying the magazine or book they are in.

[Kuang_Grade]

While the expanison of a secondary market that offers cash for books would have some impact on theft rates, it sounds like there might be more going on if so many bookstores are having a hard time, like overall demographic shifts impacting their customer base, increasing competition from Amazon, and simply more competition for entertainment spending.

That's an interesting development with remainders in Japan, Mulboyne...In the US, remainders are likely one the larger profit centers (both in margin and likely in absolute numbers as well) for many new bookstores. While the credit terms are ususally poor (often cash upfront/on delivery and no returns), gross margins of 100% are not uncommon unlike 25-40%ish gross margins on back catalog stock....and given the low selling price points, the turnover rate on remainders is usually very high (although there is always some dreck that will never sell).

[Mulboyne]

Blaming shoplifting and Book Off is definitely an easy way for the stores to ignore the other trends which are working against the industry which are probably more important.

However, Book-Off is not insignificant. Their website says they have 893 stores nationwide (289 directly-managed, 25 managed by subsidiaries and 579 franchise stores). If that Yomiuri figure is correct and there are 15,000 regular book stores in Japan, that makes around one Book Off outlet for every 17. They are also usually quite large - not as big as the book super stores but several times the size of small shops. Of course, you can argue the other way too. The Yomiuri mentions that the main shoplifted items are manga and photo albums which you can buy at station kiosks, convenience stores, DVD shops and the like as well as regular book stores so that ratio isn't accurate for the market for those items.

One of the problems for smaller stores is that they can't always get a good supply of popular books because publishers will fill the orders of the bigger stores first. If people can't find a copy of a hot item in their local store when they want it then they end up not bothering to go. There's a Book-Off in Gotanda on the other side of the road from 2 mid-sized regular book stores and 200 yards from another; sometimes you can find a second hand copy of a new book there when the other shops are already out of stock.