Thursday, November 11, 2004
Borders Civil War?
Last night I was talking with a group of booksellers and the subject of Borders came up. Lately there are louder rumors coming out of Ann Arbor that a rift between the corporate executives and the book buyers is causing problems in the retail stores. The two main points I heard last night were:
1) The execs are changing the inventories to focus even heavier on frontlist and bestsellers at the expense of drastically cutting back their breadth in backlist title selection. The result is stacks and stacks of the latest Toni Morrison, but only two or three of her backlist titles instead of 9-10.
2) Staff are divided among cashiers, stockers, and booksellers. Cashiers are only allowed to operate the cash register, not help customers find a book. Booksellers are only allowed to help customers, not to stock the shelves.
Both of these are conjecture, that I hope someone reading this can comment on.
My prediction, if these changes at Borders are true, is that more of the book buyers will get fed up with this gutting of the Borders culture. Hopefully many of them will have saved up some capital and can open their own stores.
The more I study the bookselling landscape, the more I see a need to promote the independents that are still standing and the need to encourage new booksellers to find an underserved population and open a bookstore.
Ten years ago, when I first looked at books as a business, the scene was dismal. Superstores were opening next to established independents, publishers were desperate to throw promotional money at the chains to take their books, and authors couldn't wait to read at the shiny new megastores.
Now things are changing. It's not all milk and honey, for sure, but new locally-owned bookstores are finding success, the publishers are coming back to independents as the true champions of new books, and authors are finding better relationships building at a local bookstore than at a faceless chain.
It's a positive direction.
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1) The execs are changing the inventories to focus even heavier on frontlist and bestsellers at the expense of drastically cutting back their breadth in backlist title selection. The result is stacks and stacks of the latest Toni Morrison, but only two or three of her backlist titles instead of 9-10.
2) Staff are divided among cashiers, stockers, and booksellers. Cashiers are only allowed to operate the cash register, not help customers find a book. Booksellers are only allowed to help customers, not to stock the shelves.
Both of these are conjecture, that I hope someone reading this can comment on.
My prediction, if these changes at Borders are true, is that more of the book buyers will get fed up with this gutting of the Borders culture. Hopefully many of them will have saved up some capital and can open their own stores.
The more I study the bookselling landscape, the more I see a need to promote the independents that are still standing and the need to encourage new booksellers to find an underserved population and open a bookstore.
Ten years ago, when I first looked at books as a business, the scene was dismal. Superstores were opening next to established independents, publishers were desperate to throw promotional money at the chains to take their books, and authors couldn't wait to read at the shiny new megastores.
Now things are changing. It's not all milk and honey, for sure, but new locally-owned bookstores are finding success, the publishers are coming back to independents as the true champions of new books, and authors are finding better relationships building at a local bookstore than at a faceless chain.
It's a positive direction.
