Comments on: Borders Cutting Back on Stock – Going Face Out for Books

By: Pre-Orders (or, the day your favorite author isn’t on the shelf…) | Romancing Trashy Novels

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:06:19 +0000

[...] departure from typical bookselling, they decided to change the “face” of their stores by having large chunks of books appear cover out. Of course, you can fit 3-4 spine titles in the space of a single front cover on the shelf, which [...]

By: Christine

Christine — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:58:18 +0000

Of course. Absolutely figures. I get into the game and they change the farking rules.

Sigh.

By: francois

francois — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:13:28 +0000

The selection in my local Borders doesn’t compare to Amazon anyway, and its one of the biggest in the UK! I only shop in “real” bookshops in an emergency, or to sample the text where there isn’t a sample available online. They hardly ever have what I want anymore.

By: Phyl

Phyl — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:21:32 +0000

According to Shelf Awareness:

the change will be apparent in most Borders stores within six weeks and be most noticeable in categories like children's, food, cooking, travel, art and photography but less so in fiction

I wonder if this means the cutback in the number of titles will be more noticible in the sections mentioned in the article and not affect fiction so much.

By: Seressia

Seressia — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:12:12 +0000

This probably means that black romance will get squeezed out in favor of all the street and gangster and baby-daddy books which already dominate the space. Sigh.

By: Karen Scott

Karen Scott — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:44:28 +0000

This has been happening in my local Borders for ages. Once upon a time, there used to be about five shelves full of romance books. Now there are three shelves full of romance books, and the others only have about five books in each faced out, along with mugs/cups, DVDs etc. I was most annoyed.

By: Angela James

Angela James — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:31:29 +0000

I saw this yesterday and as a publisher, find it a little disheartening but certainly can’t fault Borders for trying to find something that will get readers to buy more books, especially in this economy.

On the one hand, I think that there are too many books getting published and would love to see fewer books with greater quality however, who decides what books aren’t getting sold? The bookstores? The publishers? The sales dept?

The person (buyers) in charge of ordering for the bookstore(s). The lower orders to prepare for this actually started happening a few months ago and I think that small press publishing is going to have to do it better–cover art, availability, keeping in good standing with Borders/Ingrams–to keep getting shelf space. That’s my gut feel from what I’m seeing/hearing from the sales team. Borders has always been very small press friendly and I hope they can continue that.