Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Article on the Bookselling Industry
Thanks to Brian Cassidy's blog for this link:
Newsday article on this year's bookselling earnings growth
The writing starts promising by talking about the evolution of the bookstore from a daytime retail location to a destination shopping experience:
"The dusty bookshop off Main Street has morphed into nighttime destination. It's prime territory for daters, for divorced singles who don't have the stomach for bars and other people. Oh, yes, they sell books there, too."
But then it quickly devolves into the journalistic equivalent of a love letter to the chains:
"Compared with a year ago, book numbers made good reading at the giants Barnes & Noble (BKS), whose sales in the quarter jumped 23 percent, and Borders Group (BGP), where sales rose nearly 11 percent."
and this inspiring chestnut...
"Cost-cutting is in at Borders under chief executive George Josefowicz, a supermarket exec who worked his way up from bag boy."
Ugh. I know there are definitely reporters who cover the business well, and this article does appear in the Business section so I should expect stock coverage, but I wish these articles would make a larger effort to include independent bookstores in the bookselling landscape.
Newspapers love to quote sales earnings at the chains because it's easy information to parrot. It's much harder to tell how well a private business like an independent bookstore is doing. We haven't found a way to appropriately quantify the independent business in a meaningful way that reporters can use in comparison to the chains' earnings announcements.
Part of the problem is most stores don't have a paid PR staff to dole out juicy press releases to reporters. I'm not sure when the press release became the official method of communication between business and the media, but so it goes. To quote, "Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell, and advertise."
The Book Sense Bestseller List is a step in the right direction, and the 76 list helps. But these don't give us hard sales figures. Each year the Book Industry Study Group makes an announcement at BEA about changes in market share between independents and chains. God bless 'em. But this percentage doesn't give the public a perspective of dollar amounts or store openings vs. closings.
We, as an independent bookstore-lovin' community, should have a list of successful bookstores with owner/manager contact info ready to give to any journalist working on a story. (If anyone knows of such a thing already in existence, fess up in the Comments section!)
We should also work on finding out the true statistics to compare chains and independents. I'd love to know the true number of superstore opening each year and the number of store closings. BN and Borders are closing B. Dalton and Waldenbooks locations at a seemingly strong clip. How many total are gone? How many superstore locations do the chains abandon each year looking to maximize their revenues?
Wow, this really turned into a rant. Thanks again to Cassidy for finding the link.
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Newsday article on this year's bookselling earnings growth
The writing starts promising by talking about the evolution of the bookstore from a daytime retail location to a destination shopping experience:
"The dusty bookshop off Main Street has morphed into nighttime destination. It's prime territory for daters, for divorced singles who don't have the stomach for bars and other people. Oh, yes, they sell books there, too."
But then it quickly devolves into the journalistic equivalent of a love letter to the chains:
"Compared with a year ago, book numbers made good reading at the giants Barnes & Noble (BKS), whose sales in the quarter jumped 23 percent, and Borders Group (BGP), where sales rose nearly 11 percent."
and this inspiring chestnut...
"Cost-cutting is in at Borders under chief executive George Josefowicz, a supermarket exec who worked his way up from bag boy."
Ugh. I know there are definitely reporters who cover the business well, and this article does appear in the Business section so I should expect stock coverage, but I wish these articles would make a larger effort to include independent bookstores in the bookselling landscape.
Newspapers love to quote sales earnings at the chains because it's easy information to parrot. It's much harder to tell how well a private business like an independent bookstore is doing. We haven't found a way to appropriately quantify the independent business in a meaningful way that reporters can use in comparison to the chains' earnings announcements.
Part of the problem is most stores don't have a paid PR staff to dole out juicy press releases to reporters. I'm not sure when the press release became the official method of communication between business and the media, but so it goes. To quote, "Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell, and advertise."
The Book Sense Bestseller List is a step in the right direction, and the 76 list helps. But these don't give us hard sales figures. Each year the Book Industry Study Group makes an announcement at BEA about changes in market share between independents and chains. God bless 'em. But this percentage doesn't give the public a perspective of dollar amounts or store openings vs. closings.
We, as an independent bookstore-lovin' community, should have a list of successful bookstores with owner/manager contact info ready to give to any journalist working on a story. (If anyone knows of such a thing already in existence, fess up in the Comments section!)
We should also work on finding out the true statistics to compare chains and independents. I'd love to know the true number of superstore opening each year and the number of store closings. BN and Borders are closing B. Dalton and Waldenbooks locations at a seemingly strong clip. How many total are gone? How many superstore locations do the chains abandon each year looking to maximize their revenues?
Wow, this really turned into a rant. Thanks again to Cassidy for finding the link.
