Despite the fears of television-phobes, America is full of readers and book lovers. There is a multitude of avid readers in America who purchase many books every year. So even though we do rely a lot upon electronic entertainment, we have not changed from being a nation of readers. What has changed, however, is how and where Americans purchase books, a change that also ultimately affects what we are reading.
Just in the past decade, consumers have increasingly abandoned small independently owned bookstores and instead are patronizing web-based bookstores and book superstore chains. There are many reasons for this change, including convenience, larger inventories and even such things as the emergence of the mega-bookstore as a singles meeting place. The impact of this shift towards purchasing books via chain bookstores and the Internet is affecting not only the types of books being sold in the United States, but also the types of books being published, resulting in an impact on both the independent bookstores themselves and on the reading public as a whole.
The clearest effect of this trend is the economic impact on the small mom-and-pop bookstore. The American Booksellers Association (ABA), an association of independent booksellers, has noted that since 1991 the market share of independent booksellers has declined by forty percent. During that same decade, Barnes & Nobles has more than tripled its number of stores to a current tally of over 500 stores nationwide. Unable to overcome the one-two punch of larger inventories and lower prices offered by the superstores, many independent bookstores are closing their doors simply because they lack the resources to compete with their larger rivals. According to Book Selling This Week, Barnes & Nobles and Borders, the two largest book superstores, now have a combined national count of over 2,000 stores and together represent an estimated five billion dollars in annual sales.
One major factor that affects book sales, of course, is price. In this area, the smaller independent booksellers are at a great disadvantage. National chains and web-based stores buy books that are delivered to their warehouses and then distributed to their stores across the country in a highly cost-effective manner. Due to their nationwide market and their hundreds of local stores, these companies can fund enormous inventories and buy books in large quantities. Large quantities also happen to qualify the buyer for significant discounts from publishers. Because they buy at lower prices, these literary juggernauts can charge the general public prices that are below those in the independent bookstores and still manage to make a profit.
The smaller stores offer what they can to compete and that offering is typically expertise. In these smaller stores, a reader is more likely to find a true lover of books willing to share his or her passion for particular authors, someone who will make recommendations based upon knowledge of the reader and his or her tastes, plus have the ability to keep an eye out for a particular first edition or new addition for a reader’s collection. Unfortunately, as many independent dealers are discovering, readers may take advantage of such expertise and then go to a superstore to purchase their selections at lower prices. Faced with what appears to be a no-win situation, many smaller booksellers are simply closing their doors.
The other major repercussion of this trend, and one that ultimately is even more disturbing to the true booklover is the nationwide homogenization of literary selection. Massive group purchasing prevents bookstores from selecting stock with the same sensitivity as local stores can exercise when they pick and choose a few volumes across a wider range of tastes and genres to match their specific audience.
Chain bookstore purchasing decisions are made by national marketing directors
who tend to focus on the bestseller list, because that is safe. Filling their
stores with New York Times bestsellers is a sounder investment than taking a
chance on an unknown author or a book on the fringe of mainstream values and
ideas. The true losers here are the serious readers – not those people
who just want a paperback to kill time on the plane or to provide an appropriate
prop when trying to pick up the blonde two aisles over – but people who
truly love books and cherish the offbeat volumes they discover poking around
a small, intimate bookstore. It is these readers whose choices are being inexorably
restricted, and, ultimately, they will end up having to read the same books
as the time killers and pick-up artists read.
The small booksellers have not faded away meekly, however. In some instances,
they have fought the leviathans. For example, local retailers fought against
national chain bookstores in 1998 when the ABA, along with twenty-six independent
bookstore proprietors, filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Barnes & Nobles
and Borders. The complaint alleged that the defendant chains received secret
discounts and other favorable terms from book publishers and wholesalers, and
that these terms were not available to independent bookstores, in violation
of the Robinson-Patman Act.
Unfortunately, what could have been a momentous battle in this war between
booksellers faded to a mere skirmish – in April 2001, the parties announced
that they had settled the matter out of court under undisclosed terms. Once
again, it seems that might makes right. The big guys – the ones with the
money, that is – were able to buy their way out of a lawsuit. Such events
are discouraging to those of us who don’t always want to be reading the
same book everyone else is.
Just as television has helped homogenize our culture by unifying us in watching
certain programs and certain advertisements, so now, even those who eschew that
electronic entertainer find themselves just another sheep, joining the flock.
The sad part is that creative, out-of-the-box thinking (which Americans claim
to value) and healthy, diverse debate may well be the ultimate victims. And
what that really means is that America as a nation is the big loser.
###
Copyright © 2002 by Grant Voyles. All rights reserved.
The Magazine’s writers welcome your feedback. Please be sure to reference the specific article in your response.
Return to top Return to Issue Three contents Return to Main Page