Bookstores Start 2008 on a Rising Note

Did you catch Thursday morning’s quickie PW Daily blip about the 4.7 percent gain in bookstore revenues for January, which is almost on a par with the lift experienced throughout the retail sector? While we wait to hear from the Association of American Publishers about their sales statistics, it’s worth considering that these gains come despite, in PW‘s words, “soft sales reports from the chains.”

And that got me thinking about Thursday’s WSJ story about the new face-out policy at Borders, a trick play meant to spur sales and reverse the company’s decline on the stock market: “While books shown face-out will still be in the overall minority, as many as three times the titles as in the past will be shelved with covers showing.” But to do that, Jeffrey Trachtenberg reports, they may have to reduce inventory by as much as ten percent. (Here’s a thought: If the tastes of B&N‘s Sessalee Hensley helps shape many a book jacket’s final design, as is said to be the case, does this new policy increase her influence over Borders’ revenues? Discuss.) C. Max Magee hates the change:

“The failure of chain bookstores is that they try to make the bookstore experience like any other retail experience, placing the merchandise just so in the hopes that it will entice the shopper,” Magee writes. “Further down this path lies the ultimate in bookselling vapidity, the airport bookstore, where all the books are face-out, and the desperate traveler is forced to choose between bad or worse.”

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