Manager talk at Barnes-n-Nobles

[Omen]

Got into a conversation with one of the floor managers at Barnes-n-Nobles last night. I noticed that many of the genre sections were rearranged and that the second floor had an entire empty area with the bookcases and racks pulled to the side walls. I asked him about it as well as book sales and ebooks.

The manager said that ebooks are now 8 percent of their sales!! This is up from the 3 percent a year and half ago when I was following the trend. Not to mention 8 percent is EXTREMELY large when speaking about total sales impact utilizing a new technology.

They are working to capitalize on the growth and releasing their own tablet reader to compete with the Amazon Fire. He acknowledge their strategy for supporting and shifting themselves towards the ebook market in comparison to Borders who waited too late and it came at a high price; they're closing stores all and laying off their people.

I asked him what type of impact has ebooks had on their internal sales and ordering processes.

He said that if a book is NOT a best seller, they order 3 to 10 copies of it instead of the traditional 20 to 50 copies. Only best sellers are ordered in greater volume and many of those are no longer ordered 50 at a time anymore. This has created a greater reduction in shelf real estate within the store allowing them to set up more display areas for their ebook readers and new tablet devices.

He said that customers that purchase printed books are split into 2 distinct categories: Collectors and Traditionalists (people that like the feel of a book in their hand)

This is why they still order the 3 to 10 copies for non-best seller books. He said that those individuals will ALWAYS be around and present a physical market to sell to. All other sales are being redirected to ebooks.

Was all of this inevitable?

[The Muse]

Of course it was inevitable. You had to know that with the advances of technology, 'REAL' books would go the way of the Eight-track, the cassette, the vhs, the commordore computer and DOS.

[justsarah]

My main thing with ebooks, is the risk for pirating though. In the old days, you had to actually scan each page in. But now, all they have to do is buy the ecopy, and distribute it widely.

Thats probably why the stories that arent for charity (Some of them are), will probably be print.

[The Muse]

it would be interesting if you could go back to that barnes and Nobles and talk with that manager to see what percentage of the sales the Ebooks account for now...