Lemuria Bookstore Blog

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was somewhat caught up on my work this past Saturday. After lunchtime traffic, I decided to check out Borders. In response to my Tuesday local market Bookstore Key blog, I thought I might start relaying my perceptions.

I don’t know much about the Borders national restructuring yet. However, I can make some observations about the present local business model.

When entering Borders, I was immediately greeted by a vanity author welcoming me to the store. She seemed determined to intercept all visitors. I’m not faulting the author but the store management. At times, I feel I’ve let Lemuria be taken advantage of by dominating-self-centered authors “hawking their books.” I’ve always considered this rude to my regular reader customers. So now, I promise we will do a better job of keeping this sales tactic under control within Lemuria.

Back to my analysis. In January, bookstore inventory is usually light (returns begin and inventory replacement can be cumbersome). However, it’s not too difficult to keep your prime picks and your customers main desires on hand.

At the end of December, Borders announced it was going to suspend payment to publishers of their owed bills. Some publishers responded by suspending book shipments. My impression of Borders inventory, as I walked around, was that it was very light. Knowing that analyzing publishers book representations in such a big store is difficult, I was still struck by the lack of dominating store presence by local market titles. The Help (Penguin) was in quantity. However, I did not see Bush or Zeus (Random House) stacked up in the front.

Trying to figure out which publishers were playing hard ball with Borders was also difficult, but I began to form inclinations. I suspect the wholesalers, Ingram in particular, are supplying Borders, demanding immediate payment. My guess is the withheld publisher payments are being used to buy negotiating time and channeling those funds to the wholesalers. Publishers are not being paid while wholesalers are?

Saturday at 6:30 on my way home from work, I browsed Barnes & Noble. It seems down scaling of the physical book inventory is well underway. Already, I see expanded children’s activity sections, larger product displays, puzzles and multiple sideline gimmicks. I don’t think I’m deceiving myself but it seems in a short month’s time since Christmas, the B & N transition to less real book inventory is well underway.

Please understand this observation is just a limited Saturday viewpoint on the local market. I can tell you with certainty, however, that we at Lemuria are more proud than ever of our standards. We have to started to make our real book selection better edited than it has ever been: from paperback to hardback to signed first edition. We are striving to be more interesting and surprising to our browser while adding increased value to the book purchase. We hope our hard work over the next few months defines our goal.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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