Welcome

Do you recall the movie "You've Got Mail"? You might think that independent bookstores are going out of style since the quaint children’s bookstore, owned by Kathleen (Meg Ryan) lost business to the big chain store down the street run by Joe (Tom Hanks).

In reality, the retail bookstore industry has maintained lots of little independent bookstores despite the domineering bookstore chains. One advantage for independent bookstores is that they can focus on a specialty niche market unlike the chain bookstores that carry popular titles on many topics.

Online shopping for books is popular, however some customers still choose to buy their books from a brick and mortar store because they can browse the shelves and then preview their choices. The online sellers have matched that customer browsing desire with the ability to preview pages of a book.

See the link to the bookstore industry snapshot below for more details!

Veronica Rodriguez and Judith Johnson

Industry Snapshot: Bookstores

Take a look at our full industry report on Bookstores (PDF Format). If you are interested in other industry snapshots, visit our SBDC Counselors Toolkit or the enewsletter archives at http://sbdcnet.org/E-Newsletters.php.

Links of Interest

• American Wholesale Booksellers Association
• Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, Inc
• Association of Booksellers for Children
• Book Seller and Bookstore Associations
• Brown University Bookstore floor plans and focus groups
• Visual Merchandising

Did You Know?

More than likely your client has asked about obtaining a customer list in order to advertise their business. Where do you turn to obtain "the list"? Brokers compile databases of names from subscribers of magazines, school enrollments, yellow page directories, and other sources. The names can be sorted by geography, title/function, gender, income or other special criteria depending upon the client need. These are then sold in various formats.

The purveyors of direct mail lists can be found in your local printed yellow pages under "advertising – direct mail", "mailing lists" or "list brokers" or try the online version of the nationwide yellow pages at http://www.superpages.com/. Check the Direct Marketing Association (http://www.the-dma.org/) "Tools" tab then "Direct Mail Research" for list brokers convenient to you. SBDCNet has access to the SRDS "Direct Marketing List Source" database http://www.srds.com/, which provides specific periodical list brokers who sell subscriber lists often priced by lots of one thousand records.

Are You Paying Attention to
Demographic Trends?

According to the U.S. Census and Sites on Texas, retail bookstore sales in the U.S. have grown from $14,548,642 in 2002 to $16,860,300,353 in 2006. Looking ahead, the retail bookstore 2011 projection, provided by Sites on Texas, indicates an increase of $3.69 for average annual household spending on books. This translates into total book sales of an estimated $17,000,000,000 by then. (Note: the U.S Census identifies the industry as Book store; for consistency it was edited to one word here).

http://www.census.gov/prod/ec02/ec0244i04.pdf

SitesOnTexas is brought to you by SRC, LLC. © 2006 All Rights Reserved

SitesOnTexas is brought to you by SRC, LLC. © 2006 All Rights Reserved

Chuck Brant

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