Touring a Bookstore

Every writer should tour a bookstore in the company of a manager. Did this yesterday for a class. The manager had 24 years' experience in the business. Bookstore facts:

• A new book's lifespan on the displays "up front" is seven to 21 days. The book then moves to "the stacks" or regular shelving.
  
• A new book's lifespan in the stacks is 90 days.
• After 90 days the bookstore and publisher begin the process of returning the unsold books to the publisher for credit.
  
• The bookstore's "bestseller" rack may be the bookstore's bestsellers, not the NYT's.
  
• New hardcovers can be priced at 20 to 30 percent off the cover price because the publishers have given the bookstore a promotion subsidy.
  
• Today's big-box bookstore carries about 95,000 titles. At peak in the 1990s, it carried an average of 135,000 titles. What got cut? Books from small publishers.
• At a chain bookstore, the displays at the ends of aisles, called "endcaps," are subsidized by publishers.
  
• On the shelves, some titles are displayed facing front, while others show only their spines. The publishers of the full-front books have paid the bookstore for the privilege. "It really sells books."
  

Bookstores Accommodating the Self-Published

In tomorrow's NYT is a juicy piece about self-publishing, but skip the article's opening moans and groans about how there are too many writers (they mean us). This is the news part:

". . .For the most part, big booksellers shy away from carrying self-published books. But they’re still looking to jump into the game. . . .

"The Borders site says self-published authors can even arrange readings in local Borders stores. . ."

And a big hint that a self-published author will soon be able to BUY space on bookstore shelves, if that's what he/she wants and can afford. (Vanity shelving!) That'll help keep the big-box bookstores open for a few more years -- because fewer people shop in those places anymore, unless they want Harry Potter or Rachael Ray. The surviving bookstores will be more like independent bookstores: smaller, and supportive of local authors; and a center for downloads. Or there will be small, dedicated book/media stores: one specializing in mysteries, one in romance, one in Spanish-language books, and so on.

Given that, and given all the new competition for readership -- what's your plan?