From: "Chrzanowski, Michelle L (LARC-B704)[LAMPS]" <
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Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 20:51:19 +0000

I can help you make some sense of those front tables. I am a former big-box
bookstore employee who was in charge of those tables at my store. They are
preset based off of directions from the corporate office. The best sellers
are usually from the NYT best seller lists and we would receive stock based
on those numbers. For the other displays, some are created by publishers
paying extra to have their books have a prominent placement. The rest are
decided by the corporate office and the stores receive a planogram for the
month. There was some autonomy with the tables where we could select extra
titles that we may have more quantity in stock, but for the most part the
selection was out of our hands. Endcaps (the displays at the end of each
aisle) were also preset from corporate. Also, the displays were regional.
We would disregard several sections in the marketing planogram because we
were not in that particular region. This can be why they may feel like they
don’t make sense, because they are not really created by staff in the store
you are in.



Generally, buyers will purchase the main collection for the stores based
off of region. Booksellers at the store will be able to order some
additional stock especially if there is a local interest. Stores like B&N
are really more for general consumption, which is why you will see such a
larger quantity of genre fiction and literature. The non-fiction is rarely
deep (at least in the subjects I am looking for), but will at least get you
started in a topic you are curious in.



For titles like the one you mentioned, you will not see those at many
public libraries either (especially smaller systems). I looked up “Why
Liberalism Failed” on WorldCat
<https://www.worldcat.org/title/why-liberalism-failed/oclc/982561170&referer=brief_results>
and only two university libraries in my state have it (thankfully one is
near me so I may be able to go there and check it out J ).  University
press books are more likely to be purchased by community college and
college/university libraries than public libraries.



Thanks,

Michelle



*Michelle L. Chrzanowski, MLS*

Content Management Analyst

NASA STI Program Support Services | LAMPS Contract

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*From:* LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 16:45:14 -0700

I'm a book person, but I realized today that I haven't been in a Barnes and
Noble in . . . six months?  a year?  So I stopped at the one in Tempe AZ,
bustling on Sunday afternoon.



Of course I noticed that most of the store was taken up by merchandising
and merchandise.  It's a good thing that a quarter of the store is designed
to get children reading, and not bad that there's a large DVD section.
Lots of tables beckon me with deals and remainders and "must reads" (I
could make no sense out of that table at all).  I settled down to look for
new releases and to check a few favorite sections.



Sections first:  I counted shelves for "History", "Fiction and Literature",
and then separately shelves for the other genres of fiction (Mystery,
Romance, Manga, Graphic, Teen, Sci-FI, etc.).  History was a bit masculine
and presentist for my taste (1/3 US, 1/3 "War", 1/3 "World", heavily
emphasizing politics, empires, statesmen), but for every one book on the
history shelves, there were five on the rather less distressing "Fiction
and Literature" shelves.  (Jane Austen had a whole shelf, there were half a
dozen well-chosen Nabokov titles, but no Proust.)  But the surprise was
that the *other* fiction shelves comprised twice as many volumes as the
supposedly main section.  So for every history book, there were five
"Fiction and Literature", and ten more fiction of genre fiction.



And new releases?  I know I'm idiosyncratic and old and crotchety, but
nothing, and I mean nothing, appealed to me or spoke of itself as an
interesting new book that a body should at least know *about*.  Familiar
brands, superficial topics, scandal, sensation, and the like.  So I made a
point of asking about one title, a new book by an old friend, Patrick
Deneen, *Why Liberalism Failed*, just out from Yale Press, 200 pages, a
very provocative and interesting argument about the way our 'conservatives'
and 'liberals' all represent a modern liberal strain of political thought
that has led us to inequality, populism, and worse.  Not everybody's cup of
tea, but a remarkable success for being taken up in the last couple of days
separately by both David Brooks and Ross Douthat on the op-ed pages of the
NY Times, so much so that the hardcover is out of stock on Amazon and
listed as #214 best-selling overall there.  Not only was it not in stock at
B&N (in a state of the union where one might expect at least a few readers
to find the title immediately agreeable), but it had never been in stock in
print and at this moment isn't expected to be.  They could get an e-version.



I draw no conclusions:  just reporting.



Jim O'Donnell

Arizona State University