Whose Books Will Borders Be Showing Off?

After seeing yesterday’s item on Borders‘s move to face-out more books, a reader who knows a thing or two about book distribution emailed to express his dismay at the new policy. Picking up on C. Max Magee‘s speculation about more face-out titles meaning more potential co-op opportunities, this insider predicts, “Behind Borders’ stated goal of raising profits through consumer sell-through is the fact that more face-out space means more publishers paying large chunks of change for the privilege of being face-out.” Reaching back to Borders CEO George Jones‘s comments at the recent Association of American Publishers meeting about changes to the chain’s co-op program, this reader says, “The cynical voice in my head reads ‘Now some of the smaller publishers will have face-out opportunities’ as ‘Now we have more opportunities to make money from small publishers.’”

“I hope titles without huge marketing budgets don’t get further from even a spine-out chance in the big-boxes,” he continues. “To reduce the trend to absurdity, perhaps B&N and Borders will finally merge and then get gobbled up by Starbucks, at which point our real-world book buying options will be reduced to staring at an Oprah-branded kiosk stocked with a single title while we wait for our espresso macchiatos.”

Seriously, though, the question of just how Borders is going to choose the books it decides to shelve cover-out, and whether small publishers stand anything to gain from the new policy, is a good one. How do you think it’ll play out?

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