Here in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, the home of Borders Group, Inc. and a number of short-run book printers, we have seen this superstore book chain grow from one to 300 during the 1980's and 1990's. The backlash of the Borders and Barnes & Noble superstores (plus the addition of WalMart and Costco discount book sellers) is the huge tent sales of the 20 million cut-rate priced books being returned every year by retailers.
New publishing options, such as Weblogs or 'blogs,' are attracting the attention and time of readers and this has emphasized the inefficiencies of the antiquated book distribution business. More than one in three adult hardcover books that publishers edit, print, distribute and market are returned from retailers, sold at deep discounts or destroyed. Returns also persist in the DVD and music businesses.
Today, many book shoppers are waiting to buy unsold books when they are cheaper.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2005
