How To Sell Books in 2020: Put Them Near the Toilet Paper (nytimes.com) 27
If you want to sell books during a pandemic, it turns out that one of the best places to do it is within easy reach of eggs, milk and diapers. From a report: When the coronavirus forced the United States into lockdown this spring, stores like Walmart and Target, which were labeled essential, remained open. So when anxious consumers were stocking up on beans and pasta, they were also grabbing workbooks, paperbacks and novels -- and the book sales at those stores shot up. "They sell groceries, they sell toilet paper, they sell everything people need during this time, and they're open," said Suzanne Herz, the publisher of Vintage/Anchor. "If you're in there and you're doing your big shop and you walk down the aisle and go, 'Oh, we're bored, and we need a book or a puzzle,' there it is." Big-box stores do not generally break out how much they sell of particular products, but people across the publishing industry say that sales increased at these stores significantly, with perhaps the greatest bump at Target. In some cases there, according to publishing executives, book sales tripled or quadrupled.
Dennis Abboud is the chief executive of ReaderLink, a book distributor that serves more than 80,000 retail stores, including big-box and pharmacy chains. He said that in the first week of April, his company's sales were 34 percent higher than the same period the year before. "With the shelter in place, people were looking for things to do," he said. "Workbooks, activity books and just general reading material saw a big increase."
Dennis Abboud is the chief executive of ReaderLink, a book distributor that serves more than 80,000 retail stores, including big-box and pharmacy chains. He said that in the first week of April, his company's sales were 34 percent higher than the same period the year before. "With the shelter in place, people were looking for things to do," he said. "Workbooks, activity books and just general reading material saw a big increase."
Makes a ton of sense to me (Score:3)
Have you read most modern novels? A little rough but they are not too badly used as toilet paper when the real thing runs out.
Or maybe people thought they would be grilling rabbits they captured from the neighborhood for food.
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But the cheap paper they're printed on only means that they will rub off on your ass.
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Reminds me of the old Soviet joke: Why was Soviet toilet paper like sand paper? So every ass would eventually turn red.
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Watch out! The ink is poison!
You mean these companies don't spend millions (Score:2)
on product placement and planning?
Profits Ahead of Safety (Score:2, Insightful)
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Good one. Got more zingers like that? They might need a few new comedians in Vegas after the crisis.
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I walk past the tech and books area on my way to the food area. Remember, there are more eseential items than just food and toilet paper (although to be very literal, even TP is not essential). Since we can't go down to the river to socialize, we also need laundry detergent. There are vitamins, aspirin, bandages, etc. Keyboards and mice so that you can keep working at home. Cribs and baby clothes, because you just couldn't hold that baby in more than 9 months. And yes, workbooks, pencils, pens, etc, b
And they're killing small shops (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they are called "essential" they get to sell everything the small shops who're not "essential" cannot. A small flower shop can't sell flowers, because they're not "essential", but Walmart can. A small book shop cannot sell books, for the same reason, but Walmart can.
This is just playing favorites. I guess capitalism and competition is only a-ok if it benefits the big players.
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You have this exactly backwards, the response in the US has been entirely bizarre.
I don't need to be told not to go out shopping and engaging in unnecessary activities. I've resigned myself through the next year to leaving my house only for essential things: grocery shopping, essential medical, and critical home repair. Other than that, I'm not buying much of anything and I'm not spending much money. I don't even have to do clothes and school supplies. It's all cut out. That mindset will persist until I thi
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I sure hope you are being sarcastic..
People will die if we all sit at home on our hands for a year, lots of folks will just starve, some will not get medical treatments and succumb to treatable illnesses. The worst part will be the economic fallout that will kill world wide in numbers greater than the virus ever will.
Now if you are in one of the high risk groups (like my wife) then by all means, be careful, but don't live in fear. Death rates are falling dramatically now that the virus is spreading more
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Actually, looking around the fat asses the country has, our standard of living IS what is killing most of the people...
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With so many factual irrelevancies in your reply, I sure hope you're being sarcastic:
People will not starve if they have money to pay for food.
"Death rates are not falling" is misleading. At best, for any individual, the probability of death from infection is unchanged. At worst, with more persons infected the potential for a higher infectious dose increases, and indications are that a higher infectious dose leads to more severe symptoms.
Unknown is the lifelong effects of COVID-19 disease for an individual
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With so many factual irrelevancies in your reply, I sure hope you're being sarcastic:
People will not starve if they have money to pay for food.
You assume that food just happens? Where do you think it comes from and how do you think it gets to the store you buy it from? How's that all going to happen if everybody sits at home on their hands? I'm saying that if we destroy our economy, we destroy our capacity to produce and deliver the things we need to live and all the folding paper in the wold in your pocket won't get you loaf of bread to eat if the farmer didn't grow the wheat, the truckers hauled it around, the mills made flour and the trucke
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We went to war over a pandemic? I thought it was liberty from Great Britain? The founding fathers certainly did not ban all forms of government regulations and laws, and they were indeed familiar with epidemics and the needs for government action to combat this. Nothing going on today with covid-19 rules is unconstitutional. States have the authority to issue orders to manage health risks, and the feds don't have this authority except where it involves crossing state lines. You are allowed to go out to
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All the small businesses in my town have gone under.
Walmart / Target / Jeff Bezos just keep getting richer.
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I don't disagree with your sentiment - but I would like to point out that the big chains were already killing off the small independent shops long before COVID-19 hit the wet markets.
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The difference is that now they have political backing to do so.
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I think early on I recall that Target taped the back half so customers couldn't go there. At the start of shutdown, Target wasn't even open for awhile, despite having groceries.
Also note, real grocery stores also sell books and magazines, workbooks, pens, etc. Not as much, but they do sell it. Also most drug stores with pharmacies also have a lot of generic items as well. Quite a few places that are not Walmart or Target were allowed to sell things other than the pure essentials. However they all had t
Hey, I just had a brilliant idea... (Score:2)
ok, maybe just fortune squares, interspersed with joke squares, randomly distributed in the roll. That's more our speed.
Get on that right away.
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Not quite (Score:2)
The books are selling because people are quarantined and looking for things to do. Books sales would go up regardless of where they were while admittedly product placement is always important. Books have always been a staple along the check out line where everyone has to go. Quarantine is the primary driver, not being placed next to TP. But that doesn't make for very good click bait in the title because potty humor sells.
Sturgeon's law (Score:2)