But browsing at my local Borders (which is not closing yet) has become a sort of torturous affair. They literally (and this is before the mess, so I know their stock has been hurting in general since January) have very little new titles within the sections. In my eyes they've been moving away from stocking as much midlist for a while, which in my opinion is part of the reason this is happening. Part, just part. I've seen from experience how easy it is to hand sell someone on a new author -- but you have to have it in stock and you have to have a bookseller who's interested.
I LOVE bookstores. I stop in at bookstores everywhere I go. If it got so bad that there were no bookstores, I don't know what I'd do. It's depressing.
And, by the way, you mentioned Slice of Cherry in Denver and I've had it on my to buy list since!
Borders actually began to run out of money in December and didn't pay the publishers for their shipments, so the pubs cut them off. Some new books have been trickling in from Ingrams to Borders but I haven't heard whether Pubs have started shipping to them again.
My Borders has had notoriously bad selection since way before this started. I've been going in a couple of times a month for the past year and a half and shopped there regularly even before that and noticed it.
But browsing at my local Borders (which is not closing yet) has become a sort of torturous affair. They literally (and this is before the mess, so I know their stock has been hurting in general since January) have very little new titles within the sections. In my eyes they've been moving away from stocking as much midlist for a while, which in my opinion is part of the reason this is happening. Part, just part. I've seen from experience how easy it is to hand sell someone on a new author -- but you have to have it in stock and you have to have a bookseller who's interested.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE bookstores. I stop in at bookstores everywhere I go. If it got so bad that there were no bookstores, I don't know what I'd do. It's depressing.
And, by the way, you mentioned Slice of Cherry in Denver and I've had it on my to buy list since!
Borders actually began to run out of money in December and didn't pay the publishers for their shipments, so the pubs cut them off. Some new books have been trickling in from Ingrams to Borders but I haven't heard whether Pubs have started shipping to them again.
ReplyDeleteSo, not a cause, but a symptom of the problem.
My Borders has had notoriously bad selection since way before this started. I've been going in a couple of times a month for the past year and a half and shopped there regularly even before that and noticed it.
ReplyDelete