Here's an interesting take on Borders's new face-out program, from Dave Marx of PassPorter Travel Press:

"Can an advertising venue with surplus display space fill that space at a profitable rate?" Marx asks. "Surplusses tend to drive rates down, which could help publishers. Most likely, then, Borders won't dump the added co-op onto the market at once. In the meantime, that space will go at no charge to titles the retailer favors."

Which could mean a lucky break for small publishers . (On that note, when it comes to face-out, a former Borders employee who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous says, "The people that are really making those decisions are the inventory processing teams in the stores. There are required face-outs but those are generally ignored by employees if the book they are asked to bring attention to stinks.") Marx goes on to explain that the ultimate point of facing more books out isn't the increased opportunity to rake in co-op money, but the ability to generate faster turnover: "With or without co-op support, the goal is fewer slow-selling titles."

Few of you who wrote in yesterday share Marx's optimistic outlook, however. "I find it disheartening to hear that Borders is creating yet another revenue opportunity for themselves that will, no doubt, make it harder for small presses to compete for store space," says one small publisher. "It is already difficult to persuade the big chains to stock small press titles in any significant quantities, regardless of a title's sales history or general appeal... Hopefully, the continuing emergence of online bookselling, ebooks, and print on demand titles will level the playing field for publishers and give readers the kind of diverse choices they clearly want."

(That actually raises a great question: If Borders is really aiming to load up their retail outlets with high-volume, rapid-turnover titles, will they have what it takes to capture the "long tail" sales online when they break away from Amazon and launch their own web site this spring?)

For some, the bad times have already arrived. "As one of those authors of 'titles without huge marketing budgets,' it's a guaranteed downer to visit a Borders or a Barnes and Noble store," adds YA author Mitali Perkins, who emailed me about a recent post on her blog dealing with this subject. "Inevitably, even though I know I shouldn't, I wander over to the teen lit section and discover the place on the shelf where my First Daughter books coulda-shoulda been. For writers like me, our hope is in those jedi indies with their hand-selling power, and in the force, aka 'net buzz,' which one day might actually be with us."

Richard Goldman and Mary Alice Gorman, co-owners of Pennsylvania's Mystery Lovers Bookshop, say they're already wielding their powers for good. "In our store all new titles—trade, hardcover and mass market—are face-out for about three months," they report. "Oh, but we’re a small indy who knows our customers and spent 17 years observing them browsing. It’s not science or math... it’s called bookselling." (Of course, their situation isn't strictly analogous to that at Borders, since they're catering to a niche market rather than a general audience—in essence, what they're doing is an expanded version of what the chains are already doing in the 'new releases' shelves and tables in their mystery sections.)