Juno Books

Understand this is all conjecture based on my minimal knowledge of chain stores and personal buying experiences, but…

Closing 200 Waldenbooks, Borders Express, and Borders Outlet stores (leaving about 130 open) will hurt, but it may not hurt book sales as much as one might expect. Yes, it will hurt the 1500 or so part-timers who the staffed the stores — especially when there aren’t other jobs to go to these days. And, true, as Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said, “when retail stores close, those stores do not necessarily get replaced” and “that will put some strain on our sales.” (Quoting Publishers Lunch.) But will that strain be permanent?

So how can I guess that the lost of sales of $320 million (which the BGI mall stores generated May 2009-April 2010) not hurt? Barnes & Noble is also closing all but two of the remaining 52 of B. Dalton’s by January– so there’s about $50 million more in lost annual revenue for publishers. How can the loss of $380 million not hurt?

The mall stores carried books for the masses. Popular titles — a typical Walden carried about 13,500 titles compared to 80,000 carried by a Borders superstore. Will those book buyers stop buying books simply because the mall stores are not there? I don’t think so.

Mall stores were at least part of the reason (although far from the only reason) that most newsstands — once the places where the masses served — disappeared. Now the mall stores disappear. Did buyers stop buying books? Nope.

How do I know book buyers still buy? Publishers sold 3.13 billion books last year, compared with 3.1 billion in 2006, an increase of 0.9 percent, according to Book Industry Trends 2008 [1]. Publishers sold 3.08 billion copies in 2008, down 1.5 percent from the previous year, according to Book Industry Trends 2009 [2]. According to Book Industry Trends [from The Book Publishing Industry, 2nd ed. Albert N. Greco (2004)], yearly net unit sales were:
2002 - 2.45 billion
2001 - 2.4 billion
1999 - 2.5 billion (highpoint for years 1989-2002)
1989 - 2.1 billion

I don’t have a comparable figure for 2009, of course, although total books sales are currently projected to decline .5% which, if it proves true, isn’t bad for this recessionary year. [3].

For all the doom and gloom in publishing people are still buying books.

* * *

The last time I actually bought a book in a Waldens or their mall rivals Barnes & Noble’s B. Dalton, I had a child in a stroller. Since my baby is now a sophomore in college, that was some time ago. Although we still have a very nice, updated mall nearby, I’ve avoided it for a long while. I dash into department stores or a specialty store and then leave. Evidently a lot of people do that these days as enclosed shopping malls have been in decline for some time and the current economic climate is quickening their demise.

Borders didn’t arrive close to my home until around 1993. I bought a lot of books — thousands of dollars worth — there until around 2000 or so. After that I still shopped there, but it was very rarely. Barnes and Noble finally opened a store here in 2000, I didn’t set foot in it for several years. I go there now occasionally. My shopping at Borders has dwindled to next to nothing. I can think of only one book — an oversized British “bargain book” that was too good a deal to pass up — I’ve purchased at Borders in the last three years. I’ve bought more than that at B&N. When I finally started going there, I found it a much more pleasant shopping experience with a larger selection.

(Before anyone jumps my case for not supporting local booksellers — there really aren’t any nearby. The closest is a 30 minute drive in a direction I seldom go; there are two Joseph Beth stores 45 minutes away.)

I still buy books. I buy mostly online. I bought my first real e-book the other day (non-fiction: a book I needed for research for an encyclopedia entry I was writing.)

I’m betting lots of book consumers are like me and that $380 million in sales aren’t disappearing.

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