The Bookstore After Borders: Protecting Creativity from Consolidation

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



The Bookstore After Borders: Protecting Creativity from Consolidation
From books to music, why retail consolidation is bad news for creativity—and what can be done about it.

by Stacy Mitchell
posted Aug 01, 2011


Borders Books isn’t the only one. Office Depot and Staples are struggling. Circuit City is gone.

The specialty chains that grew so aggressively in the 1990s and early 2000s—the so-called "category killers" that bankrupted thousands of independent businesses—are now themselves rapidly losing ground to a handful of giant mass merchandisers, namely Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Costco.



While the decline of independent businesses has leveled off and many are finding ways to survive and even thrive by building local business alliances and emphasizing their community roots, the rest of the retail sector is undergoing dramatic consolidation as a small number of massive companies become ever more dominant. This is an ominous trend for manufacturers and consumers, and it exposes serious flaws in U.S. antitrust policy.

Books as Loss Leaders

The publishing industry has "focused its attention on the viability of the struggling Borders, but Barnes & Noble faces many of the very same issues," wrote Peter Olson, the former CEO of Random House, in Publishers Weekly. Big-box mass merchandisers, like Walmart, Target, and Costco, have taken over 30 percent of the book market and last year sold more books than Barnes & Noble and Borders combined. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-bookstore-after-borders-protecting-creativity-from-consolidation

[phantom power]

1. self-publishing on line?

Arguably it's even more democratic -- no publisher bottleneck.

[elleng]

2. Unfortunately, I don't think there has been much of an anti-trust policy in recent years.

[Speck Tater]

3. Earlier in the summer I visited three different regions of the country and noticed one thing

Everywhere I went the mom and pop used bookstores are doing just fine. As new book get more and more expensive, used books become more and more attractive to readers. And there's just no way to work the used book business on the Borders or Barnes and Noble scale. It has to be pretty local.

[bemildred]

4. +1.

Retail chains are not what matters.