The Bookseller reports that Canadian bookstore chain Indigo Books & Music has angered publishers with a recent decision to reduce the number of books it carries and evaluate books for success (and potential publisher returns) after 45 days instead of 90.
Since 1st June, Indigo has been moving towards a product mix that includes more giftware and toys, with less shelf space reserved for books. The company will also now evaluate the success of a book after 45 days rather than 90 days. Janet Eger, spokeswoman for Indigo, said the chain would look at product performance and then potentially slim down inventory on a store-by-store basis after 45 days. “If one store is selling a book fantastically and another is not, we will first look to determine whether there is something we should be doing to promote the title to bring performance up,” she added.
Publishers are concerned that this will hurt sales of non-blockbuster books and lead to added shipping costs (and thus cut into profit margins) if stores need to re-order award-nominated titles.
Indigo’s move reminds me of what Eric Burns said about Borders in his post that I blogged the other day—that Borders reduced its selection in favor of stocking more non-book items, and this may have been one of the areas that led to its downfall as it could not hope to compete with on-line venders such as Amazon on sheer general selection but no longer had the huge book selection that had been an actual draw for consumers. I wonder if Indigo will eventually discover the same thing?
“Psst! Hey guys, I have an idea.” “What’s that, Bill ?” “Well, we all know we’re going to out of business. Here’s how we can speed up the process and drive *every last remaining IRL customer* of ours over to Amazon.” “Sounds cool, tell me more…”