Standardization

There was another story today sermonizing about the destruction of small local bookstores by Borders and Barnes & Noble, with help from Costco and Wal-Mart. This is hardly a new story; it's been everything from a repeating MSN Money page to a movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. What's interesting is that recent iterations of the tale are discussing how the two "big-box" bookstores are running out of smaller fish to feed on, and have started battling each other instead. It seems that their over-emphasis on homogeny is interfering with their ability to differentiate themselves from each other, and their focus on the so-called "blockbuster" books (splashy, high-profile releases) means that not only do they lack unique products to sell, but Wal-Mart and Costco can sell all of their key products at even lower prices than the giant booksellers do.

What I find amazing about these woes is that any frequent customer could have told them this was going to happen -- and I include in that the frequent customers who are 5 years old and just learning how to read. If you are not a frequent customer, just go by any Borders store at random - and you can select any store at random, that's just the problem. Now go around the corner or down the street and check out a Barnes & Noble. You will almost certainly find exactly the same books for sale, at exactly the same prices. The accessories, impulse buy items, home furnishings and whatnot will be different, but not the core of their business, the books (and CDs, DVDs and so on). There is no real reason to prefer one chain over the other, or any given location of either chain over another.

Even the size of the store is irrelevant. Try going to two Borders stores of different sizes (or two B&N locations; makes no difference). You will still find the same titles. The larger store may have more copies, or more "remaindered" books to sell, but even that is unusual; you are far more likely to find exactly the same merchandise distributed over a larger area. They still offer more selection than a Wal-Mart, for example, but trying to find anything other than mainstream, blockbuster titles is usually a futile undertaking. If you want anything specialized, not even obscure but just off the mainstream path a short way, you will need to have it special ordered -- or visit Amazon.com, the other reason the "big-box" bookstores are in trouble.

In fairness, this same problem occurs in almost every large chain store -- a drug store that has twice the square footage is no more (or less) likely to carry the specific product you want than any other unit in the same chain, for example. This is because purchasing and inventory control are generally handled by Corporate or Regional headquarters personnel, who are doing all of the buying (and most of the store display design work) for several hundred stores at a time. This allows the big chains to get their deep discounts for buying in bulk, but it also means that every unit in the chain will have to carry the same merchandise, give or take a few linear feet of shelving.

This is not to suggest that your former independent neighborhood bookstore was any better about this, or that a resurrected version of it would be able to complete with these "big-box" giants and win. The fact is that with the rise of the electronic media fewer and fewer people read books for recreation each year, and the emphasis on mainstream and "blockbuster" publishing means that the people who do read are mostly reading the same things. The number of people who are going to want to walk in off the street and purchase an obscure title in a specialty merchandise category was never very large, and it too has been eroded by the current trends in retailing and literacy. Still, it does make you wonder if the remaining bookstores might get a new lease on life.

Or if e-books will be the product that finally does them all in…