We often are asked why we think that bookstores can survive better than their counterparts in music? We have said that many will not adapt and cling to the sale or return me to model and perish. However we strongly believe that the booksellers who adapt, specialise, grow their customer knowledge and community pull can survive. Bookstores today need to be open to selling books, new, old, used, and remaindered, alongside other book related goods.
If you think this is bad advice we suggest you watch this Sky News video.
2 comments:
It's bloody good advice and it's so obvious I wonder why no one has suggested it before. Bookshops would make more profit from the secondhand books that the new ones I would imagine. Bring your old Dan Brown in and get 20% off the new one. With prices of second hand books starting (most likely) at pennies it would bring a more varied customer into the shops.
Never really noticed it until you pointed it out but booksellers are split naturally; never the twain of new and secondhand met. Remaindered chains were separate from the first two.
It's blindingly obvious Martyn. My flabber is gasted.
Even without the recession and decreasing sales this should have been an obvious idea for someone to try out before now.
Good advice, maybe, but don't forget secondhand books are not easy to sell, due to the internet, where you can find almost any book for a few pennies. Each book takes time and effort, maybe too much for the little profit you'll make. Besides, there is a real division in buyers, some will never buy a used book (you never know what it's used for...). Toptens do not apply, so some knowledge would be useful, but is not easy to find. Bookselling is not uncompilcated!
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