[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Actually, that format bookstore would be the most likely to survive into the next decade and beyond...
...if Borders weren't shutting them down.
<sigh>

Hard to say, without knowing details about which are being shuttered. Not all malls are equal. Some have rather higher rents than others, and the problem of "Can they sell enough books to cover the costs?" will bite.

I'm quite sure a number of mall locations are under-performing. I also suspect Borders could do a better job on tracking product mix and understanding what sells where.

Sales per square foot is *exactly* the issue.
The superstores killed the independents based on deeper catalog and lower price. But online rules on both catalog and price, so what remains? Ambiance? Do people rushing in for the latest Oprah book club recommendation care about ambiance?

It depends on where they are.

For a mall location, picking up the latest Oprah recommendation might well be an "impulse purchase", that you do while at the mall for other reasons. But in such a case, you have an idea of what you want, and you aren't likely to linger and browse once you've made your selection.

For a larger venue, like a superstore, ambiance is critical. You go in expecting to browse, and possibly discover things by serendipity. You want an environment which encourages that, and in which you are comfortable in doing so.

The growing emphasis on bestsellers means the bulk of the floor space goes to slow sellers which means the most efficient bookstore format is the old B. Dalton mall bookstore format; minimal floorspace devoted to genre paperbacks, magazines, and best sellers. In other words, the classic newstand.

The bulk of the floor space going to slow sellers has always been the case. The difference, in the days before the superstore, was that you didn't have the shelf space to hold any significant percentage of what was published, so slower selling titles got purged regularly to make room for new stock. Most books did not (and do not) get reordered. In a place like an airport newsstand, the shelf life of a title might be as short as two weeks.

Add in a print-on-demand system tied to online sales in the back, a line of branded ebook readers in a corner, and a deli/coffee bar on the side and you just might survive.

Depending on location, you might not want the POD system.

The bestsellers and food pay the rent, the paperbacks, ebooks, and POD provide the profits; you get high sales per footage and headcount (staff of four per shift) and you can get by well into the next century.

But that is exactly the opposite of what Borders is doing and even B&N is falling short of that "less is more" model.

As I said, pbooks are not going away anytime soon; but the *big* stores just don't make economic sense. Bookstores won't die but the business model of warehousing pre-printed books stopped making sense ages ago. It's time to change or die.

Whether a big store makes economic sense depends on where it is. Part of the issue with Borders vs B&N is that they were trying to compete in the same markets with the same approaches. There may be a market to support one superstore in an area. There is unlikely to be room for two.
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Dennis