Edward Nawotka, in a March 16 Publishers Weekly article, writes about the contrast observable at the Spring Book Show, a remainders show held in early March in Atlanta.
There are plenty of remainders available because of huge returns due to a weak Christmas season. Savvy retailers were scarfing up bargains by the pallet load, yet he reports that attendance at the show was off 25 percent and that “largely absent were…independent booksellers.”
One retail bookseller at the show said he’d recently bought five skids of books for $0.12 each including delivery. When they landed he held a sale, offering them still in the boxes, for $1.99 to $2.99. He sold 1,500 in an hour and a half. He said those 90 minutes paid for the books and “everything after that was profit.”
Apparently readers still want to read.
I’ve long maintained that independent bookstore owners need to get more aggressive and use every strategy available to them to compete with the chains. Buying books at $0.12 each and selling them for $2 to $3 might be one to look into.
As an aside: Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that a recent Gallop poll shows only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution. There’s a short story in that.