(Note to my readers. This longer-than-usual post is really two. The first half is a recital of what I believe is very relevant history. The second half is about how things are now. Although I am personally fascinated by the historical context, if you get bored with the history, the bolded text below marks the […]
Borders Crosses the Last Frontier
The end of Borders took place within a larger context. I was in Italy for the IfBookThen conference last February when Borders’ impending bankruptcy was a rising expectation. Somebody in the audience asked me if I attributed Borders’ difficulties to ebooks. I said: “When the flu hits town, the old and sick die first.” Ebooks […]
Oil in the bookstore ecosystem marshlands; danger ahead
I am finding an eerie similarity between the disastrous Gulf oil spill and the parlous state of America’s bookstores. In both cases, the forces are in place for a disaster that will play out over the coming months and years. And while the tragedy of what is happening in the Gulf is far more consequential to […]
Can the chains provide us with better small bookstores?
There is considerable concern among the trade publishing establishment about the future of brick-and-mortar stores. As well there should be. Retail stores provide the most efficient promotion opportunities for books: putting them in front of people poised to buy. They give clear signals about sales appeal by positioning and piles of stock of varying sizes; […]
Third old publishing story: tracking POS, and the explosion of backlist sales in the 1970s
In an earlier post, I told the story of Ingram’s introduction of the microfiche reader in the 1970s and what it did for backlist sales. There was another new technology introduced at the same time by the B. Dalton bookstore chain, based in Minneapolis and owned by the Dayton-Hudson Company. At this time, B. Dalton and […]