Big bookstores should work harder and reject the traditional box to satisfy customers. First, they should set a talent scouting system to identify, inventory and sell successful books from small presses. Second, they should get book buyers who know how to categorize books. Horror is not sci fi, sci fi and fantasy should be separate, thrillers and war fiction should be their own genres, etc.
Agree wholeheartedly! I abandoned big bookstores because they carried such a small selection of my preferred reading titles and it was often mis-categorized or lumped together with “fiction.”
I mostly agree. I work in a unsed bookstore and we have the traditional categories. Since we can’t regulate the inventory coming in, we have to be very general with the books. I would like to see better subsections within the genres but we never know what inventory we’ll have from one day to the next.
The big bookstore should drop the sidelines (slinkys, board games, etc) and they would have ample room for the small presses.
We have a pretty big indie bookstore down here which on the face of it sounds great but a lot of their shelf space is taken up with best sellers, sidelines, and very little small press.
Unfortunately Craig, there is still a stigma about genre books out there. I feel fake genre books, like the Twilight series of books, actually get their own displays, and thus separate sections. Heck, you can even see them at Walmarts small book section, which is like the saddest place I’ve seen, like some kind of hell where only bad books are on the shelf.
Genre books will always be shoved in the corner in a big pile, where kids with unicorn lunchboxes and black rimmed glasses will peruse them, looking for a gem in the pile… or they will just go on Amazon, LOL.
I would be extremely surprised–shocked, even–if big bookstores were to take even this small, tiny step toward repairing their business model. (It’s kind of like expecting publishers to offer fair terms in the first contract–never gonna happen.)
I wonder if there is room for an aggregator that could become recognized by Barnes & Noble as a “publisher” of sorts–somebody who would go around and identify topselling genre books from small presses, and put them together into a single catalog to make selling them more efficient for the distributor. The aggregator gets a royalty from the publisher’s cut. If B&N is not interested in the idea, I’m sure Amazon will continue to happily eat their lunch.
I agree with you and I too work in a very small bookshop at a renaissance faire and we choose our inventory very carefully. The trouble is with small presses that they usually have a poor ordering catalog for vendors, that combined with poor prices and increased shipping costs combining again with the shear number of small presses out there, make it expensive for small vendors to purchase from small presses. At least that has been my experience thus far.
i’m such an Amazon addict now, I barely have any desire to browse atthe big bookstores. I still like the small, indie shops, though and those survive because of the people, relationships, specialties, knowledge of books in general, and reputation. I would shop at an indie bookstore because I would want to support local business. But why the hell would I go buy a book at B&N for 40% more than i could buy it through Amazon, where I can also scan reader reviews, and get it shipped to my door or downloaded directly to my E-reader? I just think the bix box stores have failed to mature with the market.
bix = big.