8. BOOKSTORES INTRODUCTION Book retail is really a set of businesses. First, it’s both physical and digital. More than half of book retail takes place online (with Amazon accounting for at least half of those sales). Physical retail, on its own, has several components, broadly speaking: chain bookstores, independent bookstores, big box retailers like Costco, and “newsstands” at drug and grocery stores, airport stores, etc. Then there’s digital, capturing more than 10% of most book publisher sales, and the vast majority of self-publishing sales. Amazon controls at least three-quarters of that market.1 Academic and educational publishing have different retail profiles. This section of the report pulls together much of the media coverage of bookstores during the current crisis. We hope this will illuminate, and in turn be illuminated by, the non-publishing sections, while addressing the fundamental question: how have bookstores tried to weather the COVID storm, and what are the implications for publishing?
THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON BOOKSTORES (i) Data Despite all of the positive news around publisher sales based on AAP and NPD data (see the Publishing section), the U.S. Census data show that bookstore sales declined 28.8% in October 2020 vs 2019 and 31% YTD.2, 3 Keep in mind that these data do not include book sales from online-only retailers like Amazon, Apple or Google Books (neither print nor digital). There’s a wide disparity of retail book sales change across type of outlet. Non-traditional physical retailers like drugstores, grocery stores and big box stores have remained open during the epidemic and generally carry a small, curated selection of popular titles. Several retail categories show improved sales versus 2019, and many of those that do also sell some books, including grocery stores, are up 12%, with warehouse clubs and superstores up 7%. These sectors probably account for an increased percentage of brick-and-mortar book retail sales. A significant share of book purchases appears to have shifted to large non-traditional physical retail outlets. As we report elsewhere, major brick-and-mortar retailers, like Walmart and Target, have also seen a huge boost in sales this year, both in-store and online. One result is that the increases in sales through these outlets are accruing to a limited number of titles, further widening the gap between the top bestsellers and the vast majority of titles available for sale.
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